Jerry West, a Hall-of-Famer player and later executive with the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers, has died. He was 86.

West’s death was announced Wednesday morning by the Los Angeles Clippers, for whom he had worked as a consultant since 2017. The team’s announcement called him the “personification of basketball excellence and a friend to all who knew him.”

A two-time All-American and the 1959 Final Four Most Outstanding Player at West Virginia, West — known in those days as “Zeke from Cabin Creek,” which ran near his birthplace of Chelyan, W.Va. — was drafted second overall (after fellow Hall-of-Famer Oscar Robertson) by the then-Minneapolis Lakers in 1960 after leading Team USA to a gold medal in the Rome Olympics. Averaging 27 points and 6.7 assists per game, he made the All-Star team in all 14 of his seasons as a player, and was a 10-time first-team All-NBA pick.

Known as “Mr. Clutch” for his late-game heroics, West led the Lakers to seven NBA Finals from 1962-70, but lost each time, usually to the Boston Celtics. The Lakers finally broke through by beating the New York Knicks in five games in 1972, with West earning Finals MVP honors. He spent three seasons as Lakers coach, then scouted for a time before becoming the team’s general manager in 1983.

West took on another nickname after 1969, when artist Alan Siegel used his silhouette dribbling a basketball as the basis for the NBA’s iconic logo. Thereafter, many referred to West as “The Logo.”

“While it’s never been officially declared that the logo is Jerry West,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in 2021, “it sure looks a lot like him.”

West helped build the “Showtime” Lakers of Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, which won NBA championships in 1980, 1982, 1985, 1987 and 1988. He later brought Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal to L.A., and was still GM when the team won the first of three straight NBA titles in 2000.

After leaving the Lakers in 2000, West spent four seasons (2002-07) as general manager of the Memphis Grizzlies. He was later on the executive board of the Golden State Warriors, where he added championship rings in 2015 and 2017.

West became familiar to a new generation of fans in 2022, when actor Jason Clarke played him in the HBO miniseries “Winning Time,” the story of the “Showtime” Lakers. Clarke portrayed West as paranoid and volatile, which not only irked West, but led many who knew him to loudly argue was not an accurate picture of the man.

West was named to the NBA’s 35th, 50th and 75th anniversary all-time teams, and is a member of both the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the College Basketball Hall of Fame. His No. 44 was retired by both the Lakers and West Virginia, and he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2019.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.