This has been a season for goodbyes. There was Michael Jordan, of course. But also David Robinson. Perhaps Karl Malone and John Stockton as well. Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon said it just a year ago. They all were greeted appreciatively here, sent on their way with applause and appreciation.
And Wednesday in the United Center, it may be the final appearance of perhaps the most accomplished man in NBA history, someone whose feats are unlikely to be rivaled. Kobe may top Michael. And Yao may top Robinson and Olajuwon.
But no one will match Lenny Wilkens.
“I’ve always been told, `If people cared enough they could find out who you are.’ You don’t have to beat a bass drum all the time,” said Wilkens, coach of the Toronto Raptors. “I’ve always felt, if you’re good, people will see it. You don’t have to tell people how good you are.”
Wilkens never has, and perhaps that’s why he has been overlooked so often in a society in which the one screaming loudest seems to get attention, now even on baskets. Wilkens never was in anyone’s face. He was too busy doing his job.
Arguably, no one ever has done it so impressively. It has been fashionable to dismiss Wilkens in recent years as too old, too laid-back, too, well, Lenny. That’s the case again this season as the injury-wracked Raptors have struggled. But one doesn’t get where Wilkens has been without the drive of the most intense competitor.
He’s a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player and coach. No professional ever has done that. He made the NBA’s all-time list of top-50 players and top-10 coaches. No one else has. He was a nine-time All-Star as a player, the last of the player/coaches, a champion coaching the Seattle SuperSonics– when he effectively invented the point forward position for John Johnson–a gold-medal-winning Olympic coach, the winningest coach in NBA history and one of the great team-turnaround coaching specialists.
When Wilkens started coaching Seattle in 1969, while still averaging 17.8 points, 9.1 assists and five rebounds as their lead guard, the Sonics never had won more than 30 games. They averaged 40 victories in Wilkens’ three seasons. He went to Portland, which never had won more than 27 games and averaged 10 more victories per season in his two there. He returned to Seattle to a sub.-500 team that started 5-17 before he took them to the NBA championship.
In 1986, he moved to Cleveland to coach a team that had won more than 30 games once in the previous six seasons. In his third season there the Cavaliers won 57 games and they won at least 54 in three of his seven seasons. He then took over an Atlanta team that hadn’t won more than 43 games the previous four seasons and won 57 games his first year there. In two of the next five seasons they won at least 50 games. His first Toronto team won a franchise-best 47 games.
Over all that time, the best player he ever coached was Lenny Wilkens.
Now in his 30th year coaching, Wilkens has coached just two Hall of Fame players–Bill Walton, in his first two seasons in which he missed half the games with injury, and himself.
Perhaps one day Vince Carter will make it, though no one’s making predictions anymore. Mostly there has been Christian Laettner, Steve Smith, Mookie Blaylock, Jack Sikma, Gus Williams, Fred Brown, Brad Daugherty and Mark Price enjoying their most success as a pro. Nice players, but hardly superstars. Wilkens went to the Finals in 1978 with a team that didn’t have an All-Star.
“My philosophy always has been defense impacts the game,” Wilkens said. “You have to be willing to play defense and share the ball. It’s nice to have a superstar, but the ball has to move and you have to involve people. Then you have a huge chance for success.”
His belief became something of his sports business card, with the bigger kids always inviting him to play. And Wilkens never was a big kid, growing to barely 6 feet and 180 pounds. But he passed the ball with uncanny court vision. And he saw much more.
He grew up in the tough Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, the product of an interracial marriage with an Irish mother.
“They’d call me half-breed, all kinds of names,” Wilkens recalled. “But my mother always said you always have to be a step above, to not let them bring you down to their level.”
So he held his head high and didn’t say much. Like now.
Wilkens was a baseball player. Classmate Tommy Davis, who later had a long and stellar career with the Los Angeles Dodgers, persuaded Wilkens to try basketball as a senior at legendary Boys High School. He became a starter immediately and got a scholarship to Providence College, where he was an All-American. But he also got an economics degree and had enrolled for graduate studies at Boston College while awaiting a teaching job at Providence.
He was drafted by the St. Louis Hawks in 1960 but never contacted them. Then he saw a playoff game that spring in Boston and decided he was better than the point guards on the floor: Hall of Famers Bob Cousy and Slater Martin.
So he went to St. Louis, then the southernmost city in the NBA, and the most uncomfortable for black players. Years before, the Hawks had traded the rights to Bill Russell, in part, because the community didn’t care for the idea of a black star. Wilkens was asked to leave a neighborhood where he bought a home. His dog was poisoned. He carried a gun for protection. He never complained. He understood the times. He grew up going to Ebbets Field watching Jackie Robinson and decided he, too, wouldn’t fight with them, just beat them.
Wilkens became the second black to coach in the NBA after Russell, though he never had a championship team handed to him. It’s been no secret around the NBA that the black coaches mostly have had to start at the bottom, making titles and winning seasons rarer.
But Wilkens survived, and he prospered.
“I’ve been consistent,” he said. “I’ve been able to communicate with young athletes. And I’ve had success. Those three factors have enabled me to have a long career.”
The talk in Toronto is there will be a shakeup after this disappointing season and Wilkens, with a year left on his contract, could be gone. He’s 65, and jobs don’t come along that often at that age.
“I’ve taken a lot of heat. That’s the nature of our business,” Wilkens conceded. “I’ll try to weigh and judge the situation at the end of the season. It has been a difficult season with all the injuries, but as we’ve gotten people back we’ve started to beat good teams, and that renews you. We’re a long shot for the playoffs, but we’re competing now and we’ll see what we can do.”
Never quit, never give in, find a way. Lenny Wilkens always has.
