GREGG DOYEL

Doyel: David West gives one final lesson for the road

Gregg Doyel
gregg.doyel@indystar.com
Indiana Pacers forward David West (21) clears the ball from the lane in the second half of their game Saturday, March 14, 2015, evening at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. The Pacers lost to the Celtics 89-93.

Same as he did for years with the Pacers, David West just showed the kids how it's done.

This, kids, is how you do it: If you're serious about winning — and David West was as serious about it as any professional athlete you're likely to see — you take less money and the locker-room cred that goes with it. You take less of a role, less personal comfort. You turn down anything and everything being offered by the good teams to sign with the great one.

David West just did it, accepting the veteran's minimum salary of $1.4 million for the 2015-16 season to play for the San Antonio Spurs, who are gearing up for a serious title run — surely their last serious title run (right?) with the core of Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker — this season.

Most years, signing David West is your headline. This year, for the Spurs, it's the smaller print. The Spurs already got their headliner, second-team All-NBA selection LaMarcus Aldridge. Aldridge plays the same position as West, by the way. West isn't going to San Antonio to start, or to play very much. If he averages even 20 minutes a game next season, something in San Antonio has gone very wrong.

West knows. He knows his value, knows his game, knows how modestly both fit in the Spurs' hierarchy, and chose San Antonio anyway. He turns 35 next month, and knows his window to win an elusive NBA title is closing.

When the news broke late Monday afternoon about West and the Spurs, guess who wasn't surprised at all? The coach at his alma mater. Chris Mack wasn't the head coach when West played at Xavier from 1999-2003, but he was on Skip Prosser's staff for West's first two seasons there, and has come to know West even more since becoming the Xavier head coach in 2009.

And this is what Mack told me Monday, after the West-to-San Antonio news broke.

"David West has the 'X' tattooed on his shoulder," Mack said. "On either side of the 'X' it says, 'My life, my way.' He does things his way, and nothing is a higher priority to Dave than winning."

Believe me when I tell you this: West knew what he was doing when he opted out of his contract with the Pacers, which would have paid him $12.6 million in 2015-16. Some players roll the dice on themselves and lose; David West didn't do that. He rolled the dice on himself and won, knowing only that he was turning down a fortune but hoping a great team — the Spurs, Cavaliers and NBA champion Warriors were his top targets — would give him a shot.

What West did, even what I'm writing — he went to the Spurs because he wants to win — will be perceived by some as a shot at the Pacers. West absolutely has a gripe with the Pacers, but that's not what this is about. Nowhere on Earth does the logical argument exist that West has a better opportunity at the 2016 NBA title in Indianapolis than San Antonio. Leaving the Pacers for the Spurs isn't an indictment of the Pacers' talent; it's an accurate assessment.

(That said, the Pacers will be pretty good next season. Championship contender good? No. But definitely playoff good. Possibly top-four seed good. The Spurs, however, will be legit title-contender good now that they've added LaMarcus Aldridge.)

The gripe West has with the Pacers, a gripe that has gone unspoken for now, is his view of the basketball culture here. Talk to people in NBA circles who are close to West, and they'll tell you he was fed up with being the wisest old owl in the Pacers' locker room. He was tired of being the guy, the only guy, that younger teammates — which is to say, any of them — come to for guidance. And he was especially tired of being that guy in a locker room that has had its share of knuckleheads (Lance Stephenson) and brooders (Roy Hibbert).

It's no coincidence that in San Antonio, West picked a franchise with veterans who are more respected than even himself. Tim Duncan? The gold standard of leadership. Ginobili? Parker? On the next tier. Duncan has five NBA titles, Ginobili and Parker four. In San Antonio, as far as leadership goes, West will be just another guy.

Imagine that locker room, where David West is just another guy. He found one, and took a massive pay cut to join it.

It's right, you know, what they said about West every time he was introduced at a Pacers game.

He's a bad, bad man.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel