Jerry West said he made 'about 2 cents' from being the NBA logo. The man who designed it tells us why he chose West.

By Charles Passy

During West's lifetime, the NBA didn't acknowledge it was his silhouette on the iconic logo. Branding legend Alan Siegel verified it Wednesday to MarketWatch.

In many respects, Jerry West, the NBA great who died Wednesday at the age of 86, may be the most recognizable basketball player of all time.

But it's not just his Hall of Fame on-court prowess - nor his years as a coach or a trailblazing front-office executive - that made West so iconic. It's that he's literally the face of the league: When you see the NBA logo, with a silhouetted image of a player dribbling a ball, that's West you're looking at, in his late-1960s point-guard glory.

Credit the artist, brand builder and logo designer Alan Siegel with turning West into that NBA figurehead. Never mind that most basketball fans have no idea who Siegel is - or that he was hired for the logo gig. For that matter, most probably aren't aware that West is the player pictured on the logo.

But Siegel indeed saw West as the ideal representation of the league. And the red-white-and-blue logo, which Siegel created in 1969, played a part in transforming the NBA into the powerhouse it is today.

In short, it is "one of the most definable images in sports," according to the DesignRush site.

Siegel, now 85, told MarketWatch on Wednesday that he took the job for $14,000 - and that it was a gig he knew he could easily tackle. "I did it in a week," he said matter-of-factly.

There's little question as to why he was chosen for the assignment: Siegel had already designed the logo for Major League Baseball, with that same color scheme and similarly reversed-out player silhouette, and the then-NBA commissioner, J. Walter Kennedy, decided he wanted something similar to help jazz up his sport's image.

"The NBA was not being appreciated or recognized" at the time, Siegel recalled.

But why West?

Siegel knew basketball - he was a top high-school player growing up on Long Island - and he had seen West play in games he attended at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. So, when he tracked down a powerful image of West - one that was used in Sport magazine - it all came together, quickly.

Siegel explained that he liked the action of the photo - specifically, the fact that it showed West handling the ball in an easy manner. "I thought, 'I'm tired of people doing symbols with hook shots.' I wanted to do something that was graceful," he said.

The league has never officially acknowledged that West is the player depicted in the logo. In a story on the NBA website, "copyright issues" are cited as the reason, though that story also acknowledges that "the identity of the dribbling player has been a poorly kept secret for over 50 years."

The NBA didn't immediately respond to a MarketWatch request for comment.

Siegel said he suspects the league hasn't wanted its defining image to be associated with a specific player. In that sense, the fact that the image is silhouetted and not instantly recognizable as West works in the NBA's favor.

West himself had a "complicated relationship" with the logo, according to the NBA site. Apparently, it's not easy being the face of a sport. "You wish that no one knew who it was," West said in a recent podcast interview.

West also joked about the royalties received - or, to be more accurate, not received. "I probably made about 2 cents off that," he said of the logo.

As for Siegel, he's the force behind countless logos, for institutions and companies ranging from the City University of New York to Xerox (XRX) and American Express (AXP).

But he acknowledged that the NBA logo is perhaps his most famous piece of branding. So much so that he's planning on writing a book about it, noting that similar images have been created for other sports in that imitation-is-the-sincerest-form-of-flattery vein.

And, yes, Siegel still counts himself a fan of West's and was sorry to hear of his passing.

"He was an extraordinary player," Siegel said. "One of the best."

-Charles Passy

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06-13-24 1414ET

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