Live Q&As

West: I think for me, a very vivid imagination. When you're young and when you're by yourself a lot of the time, you do a lot of hoping and wishing that you can have a life that's different from where you come from. I don't care from what background you come from, kids think "I'd like to do this, I'd like to do that ..." I think your imagination stirs emotions inside -- you're hoping for something special.

I had a skill and really didn't know I had it, which allowed me to live a life far beyond anything I ever dreamed.

West: It was obviously a story that needed to be told. As I told numerous people, it was a very reflective time in my life. I needed someone very skilled to get all this out of me, and it wasn't going to be easy, and I needed someone I trusted to get this out of me in a way that really reflected who I was. I have had numerous people say to me, "That sounds exactly like you when you are talking."

Coleman:  Jerry had let a couple of people know he was interested in doing this, although he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to do this. ... He wanted somebody who didn't make his or her living every day writing about the sport, and yet someone who had an appreciation of the game -- and who might understand him.

I was the person that the agent Ian Kleinert, who put this together, thought might fit the bill.

The key thing was when we met, there was a feeling that we could embark on this journey together, with complete trust, knowing it wasn't going to be easy.

I don't think it can be stressed enough that Jerry played at a very interesting time in American history, his career spanned the entire Civil Rights era, and I had written about race in my book, "Long Way to Go: Black and White in America" and had spent seven years doing so.  Jerry was curious--as he is about nearly everything--why I had devoted seven years of my life to writing about something so complex and a dilemma that we as a country still have not been able to entirely resolve. He had traveled with an integrated team around an America that was segregated and players didn't talk about this among themselves.  Jerry felt particularly close to his black teammates, even more so than to his white ones, and "Long Way to Go" resonated with him and apparently led him to feel that I might be the right person for him to work with.

West: First of all, forget the NBA. To me, in America, in the country -- it was a shock. When they won, it was one of the biggest sports stories ever. It was a really huge story in a time of racial discrimination and real anger about race in this country. ...

Pat and I have never really talked about it very much. But I just think it was a very big shock to everyone who were basketball fans -- but not to NBA players. Because you knew, playing against some of the incredible African American players at the time, you knew.

Just thinking about it, it was like, "Oh my gosh, the country is awakened now." 

I probably shouldn't say this, but privately, I rooted for them.

Coleman: I was just going to say that -- I think Jerry was very happy that it happened.

West: I thought it was a great thing.

West: I was never divorced from West Virginia. It's  been a large staple in my life. I love the people there, I love the fact that they're hard-working, they're polite, they're generous with their time. I think the state has everything you could want. I think it's a beautiful place beyond description. My connection there will never change.

Coleman: Thank you, that's very nice. I've obviously spent a lot of time with Jerry in both California and West Virginia. He's the same person wherever he is -- he's unchanging, and I mean that in the best sense.

But I would say he seems even more at home in West Virginia. Maybe a little more relaxed, maybe even a little bit more himself. That's just my opinion based on three years.

West: I think the sensitivity issue was a major one for me, and Jonathan will confirm that. But at the end of the day, there's nothing really controversial in the book. I don't rip anyone in it. My relationship with my father was the most telling thing I put in the book, that and my depression.

You'd be surprised how many letters I have gotten from people who said they had the same issues with their father and with depression. If you can't tell your own story, I think it's a sad place. How do you know other people don't share the same feelings and the same thoughts? From the letters I have received, I feel so much better about writing the book.

Frankly, while doing this, I went through a two-week period where I was low as can be, because I was opening old wounds. It's like a movie set -- people walk by and see the exterior, but they don't see what's on the inside.

Coleman: Of the many, many important things that took place between Jerry and me, perhaps the most important is that Jerry granted me freedom -- freedom to basically do what I needed to do and talk to who I wanted to talk with.

Even though at first he was taken aback by the number of people I wanted to talk to, he let me do it. This book wouldn't be the same book if I had just talked to Jerry.

In talking with his four siblings, I was careful with each of them, especially with Charlie, who was outspoken about not wanting Jerry to do this. But it became apparent that he knew a lot more than he said initially, that he is in denial, and it came out in a weekend in North Carolina. He wished Jerry didn't want to do this, but it was the right thing to do.

For Jerry's sister Hannah, who is three and a half years older, I know this was a very difficult book for her to read. But she is enormously proud of Jerry for having done it. And I think that's a tribute to the book.

West: My sister wrote me a note after reading the book, saying, "I lived with a brother I didn't even know."

Coleman: The words Jerry used in the beginning were that he knew it would be painful, but he hoped it would be cleansing. And then he said, in equal measure, that he hoped it would be inspirational.

The book, in a way, is a constatnt challenge to readers. It's a challenge to readers -- even his own friends -- who want to keep thinking of Jerry the way they always have. It's a challenge to take Jerry on his own terms.

West: At the end of the day, I knew I wasn't going to make everyone happy. There were things I didn't want to talk about, but I said the hell with it, if I'm going to do this book, it's going to be honest.

West: They say that time and distance create separation. When I played, players pretty much disappeared after the season and you didn't see them. Nowadays they don't.

The difference today is that these players play against each other from the time they were 14, 15, years old, and sometimes even younger. We didn't have that. So there's more reason that they would be closer than we were.

Bill Russell and Oscar Robertson are two in particular who I would say I am closest to today.

West: The agreement's not etched in stone, but I think it will allow teams that are really struggling financially to share in the wealth of the other teams. In football, teams like Green Bay, for example, can compete. That's what they hope to accomplish in the NBA.

I think the pot will continue to grow -- I'm talking about TV and ancillary rights from cable. So I think at the end of the day, it's going to be a deal that helps the players prosper and all sides to prosper.

West: Kobe's a different person than when he was young. I think he might have been concerned that this would be a controversial book. I am speculating, and I shouldn't do this, but that's what I think. It made no difference to me at all. I am sure his agent had something to do with it.

Coleman: Kobe was the only one of significance who didn't participate.  It was surprising and disappointing in equal measure, and it was hurtful to Jerry, especially given the nature of the relationship -- which certainly seemed to me and others to be a father-son relationship. If you look at the pictures in the book, he celebrated the 2001 championship in Jerry's jersey, which he specifically asked Jerry to borrow. And in another picture, the way they look at each other tells everything.

Every effort was made on my part, including a long letter sent through his agent, Rob Pelinka.

Sometimes you have to "write around" something or somebody, and we did. I would have loved to have had the opportunity to talk to Kobe about his relationship with Jerry and about their years together, but that didn't happen.

West: Well, it's a significant difference, but it's still a form of competition. And frankly, my life has been based on being competitive.

At the end of the day, it was much more exciting to be a player -- the days of the game were so special.

We had such greater success when I was an executive than when I was a player, but there's nothing like being a player and sitting in the locker room before a game. After the season as an executive, you're proud of what your team did, but it still doesn't approach the same feeling.

West: I'm not really a political person -- and certainly wasn't at that point of my life. Both Humphrey and Kennedy wanted to get me involved, and if I had, it probably would have been with Kennedy. He just seemed very presidential -- he had such charisma. In many ways, although he led a privileged life, he had a presence about himself with those whom I would consider "ordinary" people and those he was going to govern.

West: As I mentioned earlier, for a couple weeks after the book came out, I didn't want to talk about anything.

You think you have completed your journey by talking about it, but that really wasn't the case. Even after dealing with all this stuff with Jonathan, I remembered things that Jonathan and I didn't even talk about when others started to ask questions about it.

Coleman: The most important thing is that when Jerry is talking, he doesn't have an answer ahead of time -- that's the beauty of talking to Jerry. Nothing's canned. It's as if he's talking about it for the very first time. I heard things in October [after publication] that I never heard in all the time we worked together. I kidded him that perhaps we should do  Part II -- we had enough material -- but he said "no." 

West: Part II? I woudln't want to go through that again. [Laughs] But who knows, I still have a lot of living to do. Maybe when I'm sitting in a rocking chair ... 

Seriously, you just bury things in your past, and in the process of talking about it after the book was published, I remembered things I had not thought of before. 

Somebody who I didn't even know at all would ask me a question and it made me think, "Oh my, why didn't I think of that?"

I'm hopeful that this book will be inspirational to some young kid who can't find a way to be competitive, and can't find a way to show tenacity -- I'm just hopeful that kids can see that there's a way through whatever it is they might be dealing with. But you have to have imagination and you have to dream big.