MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WV News) - Sixty-five years and a week ago, on April 11, 1960, was a date celebrated in both college basketball and in the NBA as the NCAA passed a large part of its history on to the professional league as Cincinnati's Oscar Robertson and West Virginia's Jerry West were taken 1-2 in the NBA draft.
And while West Virginia is hosting Cincinnati in a crucial baseball series in a baseball stadium in Morgantown that could not ever have even been imagined in the West/Big O era of the game which predated both the Coliseum and Mountaineer Field by a decade and two, the timing seemed to right to take a look back on how a rivalry that was long awaited but never played out in the college game and moved into the NBA.
Jerry West vs. Oscar Robertson seemed certain to play out in the NCAA finals, but Robertson never got there and, in 1960, West led the Mountaineers there but came up a point short in the final against Cal, leaving a rivalry that the nation clamored for not played.
The two, who even now, six and a half decades later, are arguably as great as any guards to ever play the college game, got together in 1960 on the United States Olympic team and led it to the Gold Medal, making it a reality that they played with each other as teammates before they ever really got to face off against each other.
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Jerry West had become a high school legend at East Bank High in the southern part of the state while Robertson was a big city legend in Indianapolis as the star of the Crispus Attucks team that, during his sophomore season of 1954, was eliminated in the state quarterfinals by Milan High, the team later immortalized, in the movie "Hoosiers."
They both dominated the college game in an era before the shot clock or the 3-point shot. It was a time when freshmen could not play varsity basketball, but West would play before sold out crowds at home on the freshman team.
Both played three seasons of varsity basketball, West leading WVU to an 81-12 record and Robertson leading UC to a 79-9 mark.
During his career with the Bearcats, Robertson became the all-time leading collegiate scorer with 2,973 points in 88 games for an average of 33.8 points per game while West became WVU's all-time leading scorer with 2,309 points for 24.8 points per game.
Robertson was a three-time consensus All-American three-time National Player of the Year while West was twice a consensus All-American.
Come the NBA draft, Robertson was the No. 1 pick, a regional selection by the last-place Cincinnati Royals, eventually signing with them for $100,000 on a three-year deal, while West was taken by the Minneapolis Lakers, a team ready to move to Los Angeles, with the No. 2 pick.
Reports at the time were that West had a "no cut" contract for $12,000 per year, the first of the three years guaranteed.
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It was a wild time in the NBA in those days and it spilled over to WVU and Cincinnati. Not only did Robertson and West leave school, but so did their coaches. Fred Schaus joined the Lakers with West, moving his family into virgin NBA territory.
With the move of the Lakers from Minneapolis, the L.A. Franchise was alone among NBA teams west of the Mississippi, the league stretching from Boston to St. Louis at the time.
"Our 7-year-old son, Johnny, point blank refused to come with us. He wasn't going to leave his pals in Morgantown," Schaus told the LA Times on opening day of the season. "I finally had to bribe him. I told him we'd take him to Disneyland our first weekend in California.
"So that Saturday, with dishes unwashed, bags unpacked, directions uncertain, we took off for Disneyland. Now he's staying."
Schaus told the paper that the New York Knickerbockers had wanted him, but he was going to take the Lakers job if the move to Los Angeles was approved, which it was.
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The NBA knew from the reception that the Dodgers had gotten there a couple of years earlier with the Rams already there that things would work out but they had had a bad team the previous year and West figured to help that.
They also knew that there was no better way to create interest than to open up with West vs. Robertson, face to face in Cincinnati.
This created a bit of a national buzz and Cincinnati, also a terrible team at the time and being in a city where college basketball was king.
(An aside here, that year with a new coach and with Robertson gone without an NCAA title, the Bearcats won their first of two straight NCAA championships).
Robertson was staying home, facing West and the Lakers and as a new decade was born, so too was a new NBA.
Opening day in Cincinnati was Oct. 19, 1960, and a record crowd of 8,176 fans came out to the Cincinnati Gardens to watch history being made.
You have to understand that the NBA of 1960 was not what it has become today.
It didn't have the pizazz of the 2025 NBA. There may have been steak, but no sizzle.
You still wore your Chuck Taylor All-Stars, the schedule was haphazard, especially for the Lakers, a lot of neutral site games, doubleheaders and not much television yet.
Still, it was pouring players into the league like Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, West and Robertson, building a certain kind of star quality that even baseball and football would have trouble matching.
But for the first game the Lakers played as the L.A. Lakers, the Los Angeles Times carried an AP story on the debut of West and Oscar, "The unOdd Couple", if you prefer, debuting.
The AP story began:
"CINCINNATI (AP) — A new and inspired Cincinnati Royals set a team scoring record Wednesday night defeating the Los Angeles Lakers, 140-123, in the National Basketball Association's opener."
It wasn't until the third paragraph that Robertson and his debuting triple-double — he would finish his career with a record 181 of them — was mentioned.
"Big O's fast breaks and drives, playmaking, assists and good defensive play made him the star of the evening."
Robertson had 21 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists in a game that one publication many years later would rank as the fourth greatest NBA debut of all-time.
As for West, he scored 20 points in his debut but was overshadowed by his teammate and the man who became his closest friend, Elgin Baylor, who had 35 points and 17 rebounds.
As the year wore on and the battles between West and Robertson continued, Baylor would continue at the top of his Hall of Fame game, scoring 41 points with 22 rebounds in Madison Square Garden in New York as part of a doubleheader, 37 with 18 rebounds in Cincinnati the very next night and then 33 with rebounds in St. Louis as they played a third straight night in three different cities.
The Big O, on his way to being the NBA Rookie of the Year, continued his onslaught as he scored 39 in a loss in LA., then 45 a month later in a victory in LA, a game in which Baylor scored 48 and had 30 rebounds while West strung together a triple-double of his own with 16 points, 12 rebounds and 13 assists.
The NBA not only opened the season with those two teams, but closed it in Los Angeles with the Lakers losing, 118-115 with scoring 20 points and Robertson 22.
This, of course, would go on throughout their careers and not since that day in 1960 has the NBA draft given us anywhere close to Oscar Robertson and Jerry West with the first two picks.
