Jerry West is “The Logo.” For years, it was the worst kept secret in basketball. Everyone knew it, from players and executives to the fans at home. One sight of that signature silhouette is all that’s needed for those with any familiarity with West as a player.
What you may not have known, however, is that without SPORT Magazine, the NBA logo as we know it would not exist.
In a new Prime Video feature-length documentary on the life and legacy of West, aptly titled “The Logo,” the record is set straight, once and for all. The commissioner himself, Adam Silver, officially acknowledges West’s likeness was the inspiration for the NBA logo (something his predecessor, David Stern, would never do). Silver’s source? Alan Siegel, the designer.
Tasked with creating a new “symbol for the identity of the league” in 1969, Siegel reached out to SPORT Magazine in search of inspiration. According to an NPR piece on West from 2024, it was famed sportswriter, broadcaster, and author Dick Schaap, then managing editor of SPORT, who aided Siegel.
“I thought this picture that I found of him dribbling up the court was very elegant, very classic, showed a dynamic motion,” Siegel says in the doc. From there, the design came together swiftly, in a matter of hours. The NBA’s interest was “immediate,” and the rest, as they say, is history.
Today the NBA logo remains iconic and instantly recognizable. The only thing that’s changed is our acknowledgment of its origins; Jerry West and SPORT Magazine, now forever tied by “The Logo.”
