Jerry West is one of the greatest minds in basketball, the knowledge of the game he has is an endless well. So when it comes to mentoring, can you think of anybody better than Jerry West? There can’t be many.
Harrison Barnes is a player that is still finding his place in his own team and there’s nothing wrong with that, while he continues to grow, the team are currently battering the Rockets’ spirit. It’s a win-win and Barnes has help now, none other than Jerry West.
For five days, Barnes joined the Hall of Famer whose Bel-Air home is just down the street from one of the more infamous basketball courts you’ll find. By day, they worked on the regulation-sized court that’s inside the home of shoe mogul Steven Jackson – a replica of the Staples Center, “Lakers mausoleum,” as West describes it, that visiting NBA teams will sometimes use for shoot-arounds or practices. By night, they all sat in the West’s family dining room, where his wife, Karen, would take food requests from Barnes and try to replenish all those calories he’d burned learning tricks of the trade from her legendary husband…
“It was crazy,” Barnes said. “To be able to not only spend time with him on the court, but off the court as well, to see how he saw the game, how I need to see the game, the things that he saw in my game. He actually took the court and practiced on certain things…
“We’d work out in the morning. We’d get some work in, and then he’d show up and put me through a workout. He’d show me stuff he would do, and then we’d go out to eat and talk about what the league is like today, stuff he saw back in the day. Who were the toughest players he guarded? Who were the tough players he went against? What was his mentality going into games? And then we just talked about life, about how he enjoyed LA, about my childhood, his childhood, all that type of stuff.”
Man having a mentor sounds great! Gaining knowledge as well as working on your game, what can Barnes not gain from this? And no I’m not saying that Barnes will be Kobe starting from next year, but he’ll be one step closer to being the best Harrison Barnes that he can be.
