Lenny Wilkens, a Hall of Fame player and coach whose understated leadership and extraordinary feel for the game made him one of basketball’s most respected figures, died Sunday at 88.
A left-handed playmaker just under 6 feet tall, Wilkens spent 15 seasons as an NBA player, was a nine-time All-Star and led the league in assists twice. He served four seasons as a player-coach — three with the Seattle SuperSonics and one with the Portland Trail Blazers — before moving into a long, full-time coaching career.
As a coach he won 1,332 games and still holds the record for most games coached in NBA history, 2,487. He guided the Seattle SuperSonics to the franchise’s only NBA championship in 1979, was named NBA Coach of the Year in 1994 and coached the U.S. Olympic team to gold in 1996. Over a decades-long career he led multiple NBA franchises, including Seattle, Portland, Cleveland, Atlanta, Toronto and New York, and remained one of the league’s most prolific winners.
Wilkens is one of a handful of men enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player (1989) and a coach (1998), joining the likes of John Wooden, Bill Sharman, Tom Heinsohn and Bill Russell. He wa
