Lenny Wilkens

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Lenny Wilkens

Position	Point guard
Height	6 ft 1 in (1.85 m)
Weight	180 lb (82 kg)
Born	October 28, 1937 (1937-10-28) (age 70) Brooklyn, New York City
Nationality	USA
College	Providence
Draft	1st Round, 6th overall, 1960 St. Louis Hawks
Pro career	1960–1975
Former teams	Player and Coach Hawks (1960−1968) Sonics (1968−1972) Cavaliers (1972−1974) Blazers (1974−1975) Coach Sonics 1969-1972, 1977-1985 Blazers 1974-1976 Cavaliers 1986-1993 Hawks 1993-2000 Raptors 2000-2003 Knicks 2003-2005
Awards	Nine-time All-Star All-Star Game MVP (1972) NBA's 50th Anniversary All-Time Team
Hall of Fame	1989 (as player) 1998 (as coach)

Leonard Randolph "Lenny" Wilkens (born October 28, 1937, in Brooklyn, New York, U.S.) is an American former National Basketball Association player and coach, as well as the NBA's career leader in coaching win-loss totals. He was inducted twice into the Basketball Hall of Fame, first in 1989 as a player and then later as a coach in 1998.

On November 29, 2006 he was hired as vice chairman of the Seattle SuperSonics' ownership group,^[1] and was later named the Sonics' President of Basketball Operations on April 27, 2007.^[2] On July 6, 2007 Wilkens resigned from the Sonics organization.

[edit] Early life

Wilkens grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.^[3]

At Boys High School, Wilkens was a basketball teammate of longtime Major League Baseball star Tommy Davis.

[edit] Playing career

Wilkens was a two-time All-American (1959 and 1960) at Providence College. He led the team to their first NIT appearance in 1959, and to the NIT finals in 1960. When he graduated, Wilkens was, with 1,193 points, the second-ranked scorer in Friar history (he has since dropped to twentieth as of 2005). In 1996, Wilkens' #14 jersey was retired by the college, the first alumnus to receive such an honor.

Wilkens was drafted sixth overall by the St. Louis Hawks in the 1960 NBA Draft. He played for the Hawks (1960-1968), Seattle SuperSonics (1968-1972), Cleveland Cavaliers (1972-1974) and Portland Trail Blazers (1974-1975).

Wilkens placed second to Wilt Chamberlain in the 1967-1968 MVP balloting. Wilkens was a nine-time NBA All-Star, and was named the All-Star Game MVP in 1971. He led the league in assists in the 1969-70 season, and at the time of his retirement, Wilkens was the NBA's second all-time leading playmaker, behind only Oscar Robertson.

[edit] Coaching career

From 1969–1972 with Seattle, and in his one season with Portland, he was a player-coach.

He retired from playing in 1975 and was the full-time coach of the Trail Blazers for one more season. After a season off, in 1977 he again became coach of the SuperSonics, where he coached for eight seasons (1977-1985), winning his (and Seattle's) only NBA Championship in 1979. He would go on to coach Cleveland (1987–1993), Atlanta (1993–2000), Toronto (2000–2003) and New York (2004–2005).

The Hall of Famer was named head coach of the New York Knicks on January 15, 2004. After the Knicks' slow start to the 2004-2005 season, Wilkens resigned from the team on January 22, 2005.

[edit] Accomplishments

He retired with 1,332 wins, the most in NBA history (he passed Red Auerbach on January 6, 1995 with a win against the Washington Bullets), and 1,155 losses, also the most in NBA history (he passed Bill Fitch in 2001). This comes from his 35 years of coaching in the NBA, among the longest tenure in the league.

He coached the Olympic Champion Men's Basketball team in 1996.

Wilkens is one of three players to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach (the other two being John Wooden and Bill Sharman), joining the Hall in 1989 as a player and 1998 as a coach. He is also a member of the Providence College Athletic Hall of Fame.

Wilkens is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African Americans.

[edit] Quotes

• "I learned my basketball on the playgrounds of Brooklyn. Today, being a playground player is an insult. It means all you want to do is go one-on-one, it means your fundamentals stink and you don't understand the game. But the playgrounds I knew were tremendous training grounds."
• "Show people how to have success and then you can push their expectations up."

[edit] Coaching record

Source: Lenny Wilkens Coaching Record – Basketball-Reference.com

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Basketball-Reference.com: Lenny Wilkens (as player)
• Basketball-Reference.com: Lenny Wilkens (as coach)
• Hoopedia bio

v • d • e 1996 Olympic Champions Men's Basketball – United States Charles Barkley | Penny Hardaway | Grant Hill | Karl Malone | Reggie Miller | Hakeem Olajuwon | Shaquille O'Neal | Gary Payton | Scottie Pippen | Mitch Richmond | David Robinson | John Stockton | Coach: Lenny Wilkens