Hall of Famer Lenny Wilkens will never be forgotten by NBA community

Lloyd Pierce was a couple of months into his job as a first-time head coach of the Atlanta Hawks when he walked into a Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame weekend breakfast in 2018 and saw Lenny Wilkens enjoying a morning meal.

While nervous at first, Pierce found the confidence to introduce himself to the former Hawks head coach, hoping to pick his brain about what it was like coaching in Atlanta, being a Hall of Fame coach, and also being an African American coaching pioneer.

Wilkens, once the NBA’s career leader in coaching wins, obliged and Pierce has never forgotten that chance meeting and the words that came from it. Wilkens will also never be forgotten after dying at the age of 88 on Sunday, following a Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame career as a player and coach.

“To randomly run into him, in every deal there is always a fear of meeting your idol,” Pierce, now an Indiana Pacers associate head coach, told Andscape. “But it was the opposite. Everything I thought about him in terms of respect, graciousness, leadership qualities, he presented in our 15-minute conversation.”

Leonard R. Lenny Wilkens died on Sunday at home in Seattle, where he was a former Seattle SuperSonics star who won an NBA title there in 1979. Wilkens’ impact on the Seattle community is memorialized with a statue outside of Climate Pledge Arena and a street named after him.

The Brooklyn, New York, native was celebrated with a moment of silence during NBA games Sunday. Wilkens was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame three times: as a player in 1989, as a coach in 1998, and as part of the Olympics 1992 “Dream Team” in 2010.

Wilkens’ death brought Sacramento Kings head coach Doug Christie, a Seattle native, to tears during his pregame news conference and evoked respect from current and former NBA head coaches.

“A lot of love to Lenny Wilkens and his family,” Christie, a former NBA player, said. “A kid from Seattle. The ’79 championship. Lenny probably didn’t know this, but without him I’m not here. A lot of blessings.”

Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr was stunned by Wilkens’ death when asked by Andscape about it during his pregame news conference Sunday afternoon.

“I played for him. I hadn’t heard the news. That’s sad,” said Kerr, who played for Wilkens as a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers. “An unbelievable man. Just an incredible human. …

“One (memory) flashed in my head when he joined our scrimmage. This would have been around 1990 or ’91. And he jumped into the scrimmage and he could still play. He was the only player I know of who was a Hall of Fame player and a Hall of Fame coach. Maybe there were others. I didn’t watch him play. I wasn’t old enough to see him play. But reading about his game and how talented he was and how he broke the all-time wins record as a coach, what a talented career.”

Before Wilkens made his biggest name as a coach, he was a dominant NBA guard until the age of 37.

Wilkens was a two-time All-American at Providence College, leading the school to the 1969 NIT Finals. The 15-year NBA veteran averaged 16.5 points, 6.7 assists and 4.7 rebounds per game in 1,077 NBA games with the St. Louis Hawks, Sonics, Cleveland Cavaliers and Portland Trail Blazers. The 1971 NBA All-Star Game MVP was also named to the league’s 75th Anniversary Team.

“A lot of people forgot how great of a player he was,” Indiana Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle told Andscape.

Wilkens started his coaching career as a player-coach for the Sonics and the Trail Blazers. The 1994 NBA Coach of the Year once held the record for most wins by an NBA head coach at 1,332 before it was surpassed by Don Nelson and Gregg Popovich, and he was the first to reach 1,000 victories. Wilkens coached Seattle, Portland, Cleveland, Atlanta, Toronto and New York in the NBA and gold-medal winning USA Basketball during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Wilkens was inducted in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach in 1998 and was also named one of the top 10 NBA coaches in league history. He is also the winningest African American coach in NBA history. No NBA coach has coached more games than the 2,487 career games that Wilkens coached from 1977-2010.

“Lenny was a pioneer for all of us, especially the Black coaches,” Milwaukee Bucks head coach Doc Rivers, who is seventh all-time in NBA coach wins with 1,168 victories, told Andscape. “He broke barriers on a personal level. He was a mentor for me, always there for me and other coaches. We lost a giant today. …

“It meant the world to me growing up and seeing Bill Russell and Lenny do their thing as coaches. It made it normal for me. It never crossed my mind that I could not do it.”

Said Carlisle: “An amazing man. A great coach.”

Wilkens also served as president of the National Basketball Coaches Association for a record 17 years. Carlisle, who replaced him, said Wilkens played a strong role in coaches getting better contracts and insurance.

“He did a lot of things to further the profession; the pension, benefits, coaching salaries rose significantly during his time,” Carlisle said. “He was a great representative to the league office, advocating for coaches and the things that coaches experience that a lot of people didn’t know about. Lenny was a great communicator with things like that.

“The thing that I’ll always remember, he was such a great gentleman, and such an eloquent human being, along with being a super competitive coach. He is still way up there in all-time victories. Very, very special man. He’ll be missed, but he’ll be remembered.”

Said former NBA head coach and general manager Bernie Bickerstaff to Andscape: “He was the innovator for the coaches association. He was the go-to guy when you needed direction. Hall of Fame coach and player who hired and guided me through my first head coaching situation. We have lost a giant on and off the court. The statue speaks of his reverence.”

Kerr also noted that while playing for Wilkens, he told stories of overcoming racism in life and as an NBA player.

Wilkens talked about racism often in his 2001 autobiography, “Unguarded: My Forty Years Surviving in the NBA.” His father, Leonard Wilkens, was an African American who died when Lenny was 5 years old from a bleeding ulcer, leaving him to be raised by his white mother, Henrietta. He said his family felt resistance for his parents being in an interracial marriage. Lenny Wilkens noted in the book that he purposely identified as Black to fight against racism and discrimination.

Wilkens was one of seven Black students at Providence College when he entered the school and said some of his professors were stunned when he performed well. While playing for Providence, he saw “colored” signs on some bathroom doors in Virginia and was only served food at a diner in that state after passing for white due to his light skin.

Wilkens believes a white-to-Black ratio kept him from being invited to play on the 1960 USA Basketball Olympic team despite earning 1960 co-MVP honors with West Virginia star Jerry West at the East-West College All-Star Game.

He saw restaurants in St. Louis where Blacks couldn’t be served while playing for the Hawks, and he was told what parts of town to avoid. White neighbors moved out of his St. Louis neighborhood when he moved in and his dog was poisoned. A white man once refused to shake his hand at a church in Ohio as well.

“It’s hard to explain how degraded it makes you feel, how you just see the inside. This was America, land of the free. I believed it, and I tried to live it,” Wilkens said in his book.

Years later, Wilkens is now respected and regarded as one of the greatest coaches of any color in any sport in American history. His legacy will live on.

“We not only lost a Hall of Fame player and Hall of Fame coach, but a one-of-a-kind person,” former NBA guard Jamal Crawford, a Seattle native, told Andscape. “He genuinely always tried to uplift and love on people. A lot of people act like that’s what they’re about. He was it. The Godfather of Seattle hoops, Coach was literally one of the very best people I’ve ever met in my life.”

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