West finally ready to share unseen side of his life with all

This is Jerry West like no one has ever seen him.

He's the same recognizable legend, even after three years away from the game. The same commanding presence, same emotional cauldron spending 23 hours a day trying to figure out a way to finally beat those %$#&@ Celtics! of the 1960s and using the 24th to finish the time machine to exact his revenge. But different.

He attended all the ceremonies when the 1960 Olympic team was inducted in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame this month. He spoke on behalf of the greatest amateur team in basketball history, at the press conference and again at the enshrinement ceremony, and said he wouldn't have missed a minute of it. West -- the same guy who skipped the gathering of the 50 top players in NBA history at All-Star weekend in 1997.

And now, this.

West's autobiography is scheduled to be published by the Little, Brown Book Group around the start of the season. This is the book he had said for years would not be written because an honest retrospective of his life would be too painful and could damage relationships he'd built through the years. That comes after the March release of the insightful Jerry West: The Life and Legend of a Basketball Icon by Roland Lazenby, who has authored several Lakers books.

"I wanted something that's a true accounting of my life," West said. "I have not led a pleasant life. I'll be honest with it. I haven't. And this is about some of the battles and things that I've overcome in my life, personal things that have never been revealed about me, a couple people in my life I haven't been very fond of. That will be there. But for the most part, it's a story that I think -- hopefully with some people -- will understand what it's like to grow up when life looks hopeless.

"I've also felt in this book that I've tried to accurately reflect my feelings about people and about people I've worked with, people I have admiration for, my relationship with the black athletes, which was so special, my love of the game, and more importantly, how humbled I've been in my life because of losing the things you don't want to lose. You come to realize that once you keep those things inside of you for so long, you want people to really know."

He's going to kill on the book tour. West is an amazing contradiction of projecting dignity while frequently leading with his emotions, so well spoken and able to deal with the media machine as the words come from his gut.

Speaking about losing an older brother in the Korean war, tears well up.

Addressing physical abuse as a boy at the hands of his father, West chokes up.

The complexity of West is that anyone would want him representing their business in public and that he can't stop himself from speaking from the heart instead of the script. It's why he veered into talking about his brother and Korea during the induction ceremony -- and why he came across as so genuine.

Jerry West changed his mind on the autobiography, simply, because he has changed.

"I'm sure there's going to be a couple things in there that really shock people," he said as his eyes pooled. "But it's what my life was all about. I learned to be defiant, and the way I was raised I almost had to defiant.

"If I don't believe in something, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do. I will not do things I don't believe in. Working with people, I've always tried to have an overview. Working with coaches, which is maybe the most difficult thing there is, and particularly today, has been challenging. I think that this will hopefully all be explained in a way that maybe people will know a little bit more about me and things that are true and not things that people make up."

West isn't afraid to delve into the personal side of life now, too.

"My relationship with my father is going to be a very shocking thing. It probably started me to be a loner, to be non-trusting, to be shy. I like everyone. I don't hate anyone. There's people I dislike, but I don't hate anyone. I'm not envious or jealous of anyone. I've been so blessed -- I've seen a lot of ugly things in my life, but on the other hand, I've seen a lot of beautiful things."

The hardest part to talk about in the book?

"I had two kind of life-defining moments: my relationship with my father, which was not good and there are things in there that will probably shock people, and then losing my brother in Korea was devastating for me. It was a time in my life when I was going through this battle with my father, and losing someone who was really close to me was both hurtful and probably made me more determined to do something with my life other than living in a little community, getting married early, having a family and being confined to that.

"That's not who I was. I was a dreamer. I believe in quotes a lot. There's one that's always stood out with be. Carl Sandburg said it best: 'Vision. Nothing happens unless first a dream.' My life has been a dream. And I've led it, and I'll be forever thankful that mine worked that way. But more importantly, I'll be thankful that I had a gift that allowed me to do something with my life that I never dreamed possible."

Jerry West and poetry ... didn't see that one coming. Not Jerry West and an autobiography either. Or Jerry West embracing pomp and circumstance.

This is West like no one has ever seen him.

Scott Howard-Cooper has covered the NBA since 1988. You can e-mail him here and follow him on twitter.

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