Ball is life. This is what they say on playgrounds across America. Perhaps more than any other team sport, basketball does have a way of drawing its legends back to the game long after their playing days are done — if they ever left at all. Their omnipresence has always tied its future to its present.
Nobody embodied this more than Jerry West, the Hall of Fame player turned executive. The lifer. His death on Wednesday widens a void no sport can halt. Where once Tommy Heinsohn was still calling Boston Celtics games, Bill Russell was still presenting the NBA Finals MVP award named in his honor and West was still consulting for another contender, there are now the immeasurable shadows they cast.