Before Elon Musk, there was Jerry West.

Except West didn’t just build a massive computer in Memphis.

He moved here.

He lived in a house in Southwind.

He enrolled his son at Lausanne.

Jerry West, a 3-time Hall of Fame selection and the NBA logo, dies at 86

He appeared in a Memphis Grizzlies TV commercial, helping a woman pick — draft? — a tomato.

He posed for good luck with the goats from Silky O’Sullivan’s.

In 2002, West left the Lakers and his glittery life in Los Angeles to become the president of the Grizzlies. 

How gobsmacking was that?

Here’s Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke, before the move happened: “I believe Jerry West is going to Memphis. I also believe that mutton-chopped fat guys in satin suits are Elvis.”

Not long after, West was introduced to a crowd at the Peabody as the president of the Memphis franchise. He promptly transformed the hapless Grizzlies into a three-time playoff team.

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In the process, West gave the franchise credibility — in the city and across the league. He may not have presided over a playoff victory in Memphis, but he lit the first spark in this city’s NBA love affair.

“He was the Good Housekeeping seal of approval,” said Andy Dolich, who was the team’s president of business operations during the West years. “Jerry West is going to come to Memphis? It was about as far away from Los Angeles as you could get. But suddenly, somehow, the Grizzlies had the NBA’s crown jewels.”

West, 86, died Wednesday, June 12. Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, remembered him as “a basketball genius and a defining figure in our league for more than 60 years.” Nearly all those years were spent in Los Angeles, where West was a 14-time All Star and won titles as a player and as an executive.

But from 2002-07, West lived and worked in Memphis, which is still — even for those who witnessed it — a little hard to get the mind around.

The Grizzlies won just 23 games the year before West arrived. Stretching back to its years in Vancouver, the franchise had never won more than 27 games.

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Things weren’t off to a roaring start in Memphis, either. The town was still torn apart over the decision to spend $250 million in public money to build the Grizzlies a new arena downtown.

Why would the man known as the “Logo” — because his silhouette is the NBA’s actual logo — want any part of that mess?

“Once it became clear he was leaving Los Angeles, there were several teams that wanted him,” Dolich said. “Mike (Heisley, the Grizzlies owner at the time) was an incredible salesperson. Along with multimillions of dollars — and that house in Southwind that Mike bought him — that got it done.”

But West wasn’t just after the money. He flung himself into the job in a way that those who knew him — and his visceral distaste for glad-handing — couldn’t quite believe. West agreed to have his photo on the front of the media guide. He posed for photos with season-ticket holders. 

West never grew to like the public attention. His moods — and his colorful vocabulary — became legendary. But if outsiders thought West was too good for Memphis, West never did. 

And yes, in 2003, before the most important draft lottery in franchise history, West agreed to meet with the goats at Silky O’Sullivan’s for good luck.

A previous front office had traded a protected first-round pick to Detroit for Otis Thorpe. Now that debt was coming due. The Grizzlies would only keep their draft pick — in a draft that featured a high school kid named LeBron James — if they wound up at No. 1.

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“They don’t have this in California,” said Karen West, Jerry’s wife, as she watched her husband greet Silky’s menagerie. “I’m not even sure they have goats.”

When the Grizzlies finished second in that lottery — missing out on the chance to draft James or Carmelo Anthony — West looked distraught.

“He was at an age when people would have understood if he wanted to mail it in,” Dolich said. “But Jerry never mailed in anything. He was as hard-working as anyone I’ve ever met in my life.”

All that work produced three playoff appearances for the Grizzlies, all of which ended in sweeps. That was disappointing, no question. West said so himself.

But at a time when Memphis was trying to establish itself as a major league town, West’s mere presence spoke volumes. Indeed, he may have seen more promise in the city than most Memphians.

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He rebuilt the basketball team, too, in remarkably short order, with a series of deft moves. He swapped Drew Gooden to Orlando for Mike Miller. He signed James Posey as a free agent. And when his first Grizzlies team got off to an 0-8 start, West fired head coach Sidney Lowe and replaced him with 69-year-old Hubie Brown.

Brown hadn’t worked as a head coach since 1987. Even back then, he was considered too irascible.

So West began the hiring process with a phone call to Brown and this question: “Hubie, are you sitting down?”

The very next season, the Grizzlies won 50 games, West was named NBA Executive of the Year and Brown was named NBA Coach of the Year.

All that resulted in a joyous celebration before the team’s very first playoff game, against the San Antonio Spurs. 

Heisley sang the national anthem. The crowd chanted “Hubie, Hubie, Hubie,” to honor their beloved coach. 

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The Grizzlies lost by a single bucket that night. It would be seven years before they would actually win a playoff game. That’s when the Core Four finished what West and Brown started, when the NBA was embedded into this city’s DNA for good.

But without West, who knows what would have happened? Who knows how it would have turned out?

NBA Commissioner David Stern was at that first playoff game. He was thrilled by the tumult of the night.

“This is crossing the bridge to the promised land for this franchise,” Stern said.

And it was West who first pointed the way.