Sports fans are in for a treat with the latest documentary that explores the life and legacy of NBA legend Jerry West.
For his feature documentary directorial debut, Kenya Barris spoke with West, in what would be his last recorded interview before his death on June 12, 2024, along with his loved ones, to peel back the layers to who he was beyond being the inspiration for the NBA logo, his wins, losses and all that comes with being a pivotal figure in sports.
“I think sports are one of the last truly pure things in society, because it’s really based on what you do on the court,” Barris told Blavity’s Shadow and Act in an interview ahead of the film’s premiere. “Nobody politics around the game, but once you’re in the game, it is sort of like the best of the best. I also feel like I’m a huge sports fan, and I think that everything with sports is that every game feels like it could be a blockbuster or an independent movie, like they all take on their own sort of independent and unique places in our life,” adding, “Jerry West and the Lakers and what he meant to basketball was so prolific that I was blessed to be able to go on that journey that he chose me to be able to tell that story.”
Storytelling as a tool for transformation and healing
Across the span of two hours, Jerry West: The Logo is a first-hand account of the trials and tribulations that led to West becoming one of the most revered figures in the world of sports. Beyond that, the documentary taps into the mental toll his desire to be great took on him, even in his last days.
“It was a cathartic thing for me as a father, as a husband, as a person, who sometimes, you know, is tasked with leading other people, making mistakes, learning more from your mistakes than you do from your successes, and really just sort of embracing your flaws and understood that that’s a part of what humanity is, and the human experience, and the things you can get actually more from your flaws. You learn more from your failures than you do from just your successes,” Barris said.
“His family was a really big part of it,” Barris added, when asked about some of the techniques used to humanize someone who is considered larger than life. “His relationship to his family, his relationship to his own flaws and demons, and just personal shortcomings that happen sometimes within mental health.”
“We often ignore our health,” Barris continued. “We kind of just feel like you’re supposed to put this hard shell up, and I think as he got older … he started realizing that he couldn’t just ignore that there was something going on. And having the support system of his wife and family around him was really important. Having people who understand you and help pull you out of that darkness is really important.”
Capturing the hero’s journey
While West may have had a difficult time grappling with others’ terms of his success due to some of the crippling losses he suffered, both on and off the court, Barris viewed this as the hero’s journey, and that’s what the film reflects.
“I used to always hear that, right?” Barris said, sharing that he read a book about the hero’s journey. “The classics of the hero’s journey are a person starts somewhere, thinks that where that place that they’re at, somewhere else is better, goes out, seeking that, and realizes that what they had was all that they needed; they needed to get out and get it. That is so many stories, if you think about them; so many of our greatest movies, some of our greatest books, so many of our greatest things. I think that as a person of color, we need more hero journeys, right? Because we start off in sometimes, a place that might be socio-economically, not what people say we should have, or this isn’t that. And we often go looking for things or want other things to validate us. And once we go out and see it, we want to come back home because we have that realization of like what we thought we wanted, we always really had, you know what I’m saying? I think we just don’t get home enough, you know what I’m saying, and I think that’s the thing, in terms of what I can gather from his version of how the losing affected him. He actually understood that the losing toward the end of his life was actually the thing that made him a winner.”
Jerry West: The Logo is now streaming on Prime Video.