One can only imagine what Jerry West is feeling today. He is an executive board member — think “treasured consultant” — for the Golden State Warriors, and the team that put together the greatest regular season in NBA history lost Game 7 of the NBA Finals last night to, ahem, Cleveland.

For West, it was the seventh Game 7 in his career as a player and an executive and the sixth time he lost the game. For a man absolutely consumed by competition, that cannot feel good.

It’s also no wonder he was not in Oakland, Calif., last night to be in the arena or nearby or with his son, Jonnie, who is the associate general manager of Golden State’s development league team. He was instead in Morgantown. “Somebody asked me, ‘Why wouldn’t you be there?’ Frankly, I don’t want to be there. I’d rather sit here and watch it and not have to be there. If you win, it’s wonderful. If you lose, it’s miserable.”

So West is no doubt hurting today, and you know an enormous part of him wanted to be one of the many responsible for The Greatest Team of All-Time. There’s a vacancy there now, and you also know West is already thinking through ways to fill that.

The work will wait, though, because all is not lost today.

The reason it’s so hard to imagine what and how he feels is not because most of us have never experienced anythign like it, but because there are divergent emotions at play. Today is West Virginia Day, and while we think of West as the visage of the NBA because it is his silhouette within the league’s logo, there are so many who think of him as one of the images of this state and of West Virginia University.

There is no doubt then why he was in Morgantown for Game 7 and why today is the day earmarked for West to make his latest and perhaps greatest contribution to the state and the school.

Today, he’ll dedicate the Jerry West Collection as part of the West Virginia and Regional History Center within the WVU libraries.

The exhibit will have items from West’s collection, including his championship ring, uniforms and trophies.

More important to West, who proudly proclaims he’s “just a young kid from Cabin Creek,” is that today is West Virginia Day.

“I never really thought about something like this until so many people came to me said to me, ‘You’ve been so important to this state and represented this state the way we like to present it,’ ” West said.

“When I was going to school here, I was still very much like I am today. I never wanted to do anything to call attention to myself. And here we are with the event calling attention to myself. It’s totally out of the ordinary for me. Hopefully, what we do, some young kid or some people who might be visiting the university will come here and realize hard work, dedication and perseverance can lead them to have a career completely in a different direction.”