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 was also an assistant on the 1992 Olympic ‘Dream Team’ and was later honored for that role.
Born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Wilkens lost his father at age 5 and grew up in modest circumstances while his mother worked in a candy factory. He did not play for his high school team until his senior year. A parish priest urged Providence College to offer him a scholarship, and Wilkens became the Friars’ first major star — a two-time All-American who led Providence to its first NIT appearance in 1959 and to the NIT finals in 1960. Providence retired his No. 14 in 1996, and he was part of the inaugural class of the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006.
Selected in the first round of the 1960 NBA draft by the St. Louis Hawks, Wilkens missed much of his second season because of military service but returned to help lead the Hawks to six straight playoff appearances. Traded to the new Seattle franchise in 1968, he averaged 22.4 points, 8.2 assists and 6.2 rebounds in his first Sonics season and became the team’s player-coach the following year. He later played for Cleveland and finished his playing days as player-coach of the Trail Blazers in 1974-75 before concentrating on coaching.
Wilkens returned to Seattle as coach in 1977-78, taking the Sonics to the NBA Finals that season; after a seven-game loss, he brought them back in 1979 to defeat the Washington Bullets for the title. He favored balanced rosters and complementary roles, often getting the most from teams without a single marquee superstar. ‘I’ve always believed you need balance,’ he said. ‘It’s not that I don’t want a star — I’ll always take a star — but even if you have a star, it’s important to surround him with the right kind of complementary players.’
Peers and successors praised Wilkens for his leadership off the court as well. NBA commissioner Adam Silver called him one of the game’s most respected ambassadors, and he was named among the league’s greatest players and coaches. Rick Carlisle lauded his long service as president of the National Basketball Coaches Association, noting Wilkens’ work on pensions, benefits and coach representation. Former players and coaches, including Steve Kerr and Detlef Schrempf, remembered him as a mentor and community leader.
In 1995 Wilkens became the NBA’s all-time wins leader at the time, briefly surpassing Red Auerbach; he celebrated the milestone with the occasional cigar in a gesture he said was a nod to Auerbach. He retired from coaching after the 2004-05 season and lived in Medina, Washington. Wilkens led the Coaches Association for 17 years and his Lenny Wilkens Foundation raised millions for charitable causes in the Seattle area.
He is survived by family and by many former players, colleagues and fans who credited him with shaping teams and careers through steadiness, intelligence and dignity. For a generation in Seattle and across the league, Wilkens will be remembered most of all for delivering the Sonics’ lone championship and for a lifetime of quiet, effective leadership on and off the court.
