Of all the bronze statues of former basketball players outside the great hall in downtown LA, only one depicts a man with a suitcase full of merits.

Jerry West wasn't just a player on the 1972 Los Angeles Lakers championship team, he wasn't just the coach of the team that made it to the semifinals in 1977.

He is the character of the dribbling basketball player that the NBA has used in its logo since 1969.

And as chief manager of the Lakers, who made all important personnel decisions between 1982 and 2000, he was responsible for signing two professionals who were also memorialized next to him: Magic Johnson and Shaquille O'Neal.

He once obliged the young Kobe Bryant, whose statue in front of the arena should only be a matter of time.

Of all his merits, the phase in the 1980s is probably the most notable.

He brought together a squad whose qualities are only inadequately described by the common nickname "Showtime".

At that time, the Lakers not only combined circus entertainment with a high attack speed and fast ball relays.

When West installed Pat Riley in 1981, a hitherto completely untried trainer, they not only became a magnet for an audience of millions across America, but also for Hollywood celebrities.

The Washington Post quipped at the time that the Lakers' home games were probably "the only place where the fans make more money than the players."

Team story retold

However, as pay-TV network HBO has been retelling that era for the past two weeks with the help of a cast of top-notch actors in a series of episodes entitled "Winning Time - The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty," West doesn't look like a bright figure at all.

Instead, like a choleric guy who escaped a harsh childhood in backwoods West Virginia because of his athletic talent, was depressed all his life and never really satisfied even in the moments of success.

A perfectionist who only didn't have much credit for the popular ball magician Magic Johnson because he "smiles too much".

The series, based on noted sportswriter Jeff Pearlman's 2014 book Showtime, goes so far as to invent a scene in which West throws the trophy he won as Most Valuable Player of the 1969 Series Finals out the window in anger throws.

A depiction that led to severe criticism in the American media.

That was "a totally wrong characterization", wrote the far-reaching online sports magazine "The Athletic".

Not so bright anymore

After all, others in the series also seem overstated.

The staging is reminiscent of the style of mockumentaries, which see themselves as a parody of traditional documentaries and cover both the subject matter and the audience with subtle, knowing mockery.

The perspective somehow fits the time.

Because today's Los Angeles Lakers, a company with a market value of more than five billion dollars, don't look half as bright as the image that has been attached to them since the 1980s.

Of course, for four years they have been employing LeBron James, the best basketball player of his generation, with whom the team won its seventeenth NBA title in 2020 after a long slump.

But the attempts to build something like a dynasty with the superstar at the center can be regarded as a failure.

Even if you don't want to blame James at first glance.

Because he leads the current scorer list in the league with 30.0 points per game.

Nevertheless, last season the team was already over after the first play-off round.

At the moment one would be happy to even qualify for the crucial phase of the championship.

The Lakers lead only one table of the countless statistics that the league keeps: They are the oldest team of all with an average age of 30 years.

On top of that, the sporting future is more than uncertain.

James' contract, which was renewed in 2020, expires in a year.

And nobody knows what the 37-year-old will do next.

will he stay

Is he toying with a return to his home region of Cleveland?

The only thing that is certain is that the Lakers have never been so dependent on the career tactics of a single player.

Unlike in the "Showtime" era, when chief managers and coaches decided on personnel planning and tactical concepts and not the leading players with annual salaries of over 40 million dollars.

According to an analysis by "Sports Illustrated", they cause a lot of mischief: "They have more power and use it more often than ever before.

That may be good for the players.

But it doesn't help in building teams."