Luck Goes West

There are so many angles to this last season. There are so many ways to look at the "big 3 era"...
But there is one "almost" constant angle...that has been unfolding for the last many years.
What Jerry West couldn't do as a player he has been able to accomplish as a General Manager and unofficial "friend" of the Lakers. Jerry's luck as a player for the Lakers was almost always bad when facing the Celtics. His Laker teams lost several times in the finals, sometimes in heartbreaking losses where his team came "oh so close"...It got to the point where in 1969, with his team heavily favored, they lost again in an, oh so close fashion.
Then, slowly at first, things began to turn around. He finally won a championship as a player. Then in the front office, his luck really began to change. Since 1980 (as GM or "friend") his Laker teams have won ten championships. I wouldn't take anything away from him as a very bright and capable GM, he was. But virtually all of his gambles paid off in the end. That is luck. He's had his loses, no doubt, but the trend has been overwhelmingly a winning one.
This guy has been so lucky that he was able to experience a do-over of the 1969 championship...all the way down to the fact that his team, the favorites, were down by double digits in the third quarter at home in a game 7 to the enemy Boston Celtics...the team that haunted him as a player so much that he couldn't wear green for years. This time, his luck prevailed as his team came from behind to win, the scenario that I'm sure that he thought "should of happened" in 1969, but didn't.
There has been a feeling circulating through the years that the Celtic leprechaun may have had something to do with their winning....The leprechaun painted on center court may have wrong face, maybe it should have the face of Jerry West...the luckiest guy in the NBA in the last 30 years....hands down.