If West is the NBA's logo, should he be?

The NBA logo is, outside of the Olympic rings and the Nike "swoosh," the world's most recognizable sports emblem. 

For years, players, fans and journalists have assumed that the figure depicted within the familiar NBA logo is Jerry West, the Los Angeles Lakers' Hall of Fame guard and the current president of basketball operations for the Memphis Grizzlies.

Search the Internet and you'll find sentences like this one, from Sports Illustrated staff writer L. Jon Wertheim in 2003: "(West is) well respected — no, lionized — in his field: one of the top 50 NBA players of all time, one so iconic that his silhouette adorns the NBA's logo."

The man who designed the NBA logo acknowledges that Jerry West is, indeed, Logoman. But the NBA is apparently reluctant to attach West's name to the silouette. (Photo illustration / FOXSports.com)

"It's Jerry West," Hall of Fame center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar told me recently. "I'm familiar with the original photograph from back in the '70s."

"My impression is that it's Jerry West dribbling to the hole," said David Kohler, president of Laguna Hills, Ca.-based Sports Card Plus Auctions and owner of perhaps the largest private collection of Lakers memorabilia. "I know it's always been assumed that it's Jerry West."

And yet, in a league with a well-deserved reputation for hyping even the most mundane milestone, the NBA did not celebrate the recent 35th anniversary of the logo's unveiling. The league has also refused to acknowledge publicly that West is the player in the logo. A high-ranking NBA official who asked that his name not be used told me that the identification of West is an "urban myth" and that the league has "no definitive records" about who designed the logo.

Why does the NBA refuse to admit that the logo is a representation of West? Is their "urban myth" statement PR bunk, or do they know something the rest of us don't?

The answer may lie within the mojo of the logo.

To many observers, the logo is a slam-dunk success. Designed by Alan Siegel and first unveiled in 1969, the image of a silhouetted player dribbling to the hole against a groovy red-and-blue background is ubiquitous: it appears on every uniform of every player, on every backboard in every NBA arena and on every piece of league-licensed merchandise, which generates a very groovy $3 billion in annual revenues.

To others, the logo is an anachronism. Today's players don't wear tight shorts; most don ultra-baggy uniforms and a great many of them have tattoos. In a league whose players are predominantly African-American and where so many of the players (despite race) relate to hip-hop music and/or its cultural significance, "Mr. Clutch" no longer seems to personify the on-court or off-court stylings of the NBA.

The logo, it appears, is stuck in the middle. Is it the ultimate badge of basketball excellence, as represented by a white player who was a perennial All-Star back in the day? Is it a timeless graphic-design icon that, after 35 years, can still serve as the public symbol for the league's global marketing campaigns, from Baja to Beirut to Beijing? Or is it as dated as the set shot?

As the NBA gathers in Houston for its annual All-Star Weekend extravaganza, the debate is getting fierce. New York Times columnist Selena Roberts recently wrote that the logo is "ancient" and that "(NBA commissioner David) Stern should update the logo."

Lakers head coach Phil Jackson disagrees with Roberts. "I like the logo we've got," Jackson explained. "It works fine. It's a flowing style that makes sense, whether it's Jerry West or not."