Did Jerry West Inspire the N.B.A.’s Logo? ‘There Was Never Any Doubt.’

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Shortly after the announcement that Jerry West, the Hall of Fame basketball player and executive, had died at age 86 on Wednesday, the N.B.A. emailed a statement to the news media from Adam Silver, the league’s commissioner, extolling the virtues of Mr. West as “a basketball genius” who contributed to every facet of the league over a period of more than 60 years. Just above the statement was an image of the league’s iconic logo: A rounded rectangle, blue on one side, red on the other, with a white silhouette of a player dribbling up the middle. In keeping with one of the league’s oddest traditions, no acknowledgment was made that the man dribbling at the top of the statement was, in fact, Mr. West. It had once been one of the worst kept secrets in sports. The N.B.A. hired Alan Siegel — the branding expert who created Major League Baseball’s logo — to create a logo for the league in 1969 and he based the image off a photograph of Mr. West, who was a star player for the Los Angeles Lakers at the time.