Over the course of my lifetime, there have been few if any Los Angelinos more closely associated with excellence than Jerry West.

Jerry West was one of the greatest basketball players of all time and arguably an even greater basketball executive, responsible for building both the Showtime Lakers and the Shaq-Kobe championship teams.

Like most Los Angelinos, Jerry West was born and raised somewhere else. That somewhere else is West Virginia, where he was a state icon, much in the way he was literally the NBA logo.

I took these pictures last year while I was in West Virginia for a speaking engagement at The Greenbrier, where Jerry West used to own a home. The definition of a legend.

RIP

Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one-on-one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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