Frank Thomas

Wilkens Notable Sports Figures
Chronology
1937 Born October 28 in Brooklyn, New York
1960 Receives bachelor’s degree in economics from Providence
College
1960 Joins St. Louis Hawks as player
1962 Marries Marilyn J. Reed on July 28
1969 Joins Seattle SuperSonics as player-coach
1972 Joins Portland Trail Blazers as player-coach
1977 Returns to Supersonics as head coach
1986 Joins Cleveland Cavaliers as head coach
1993 Joins Atlanta Hawks as head coach
1994 Named NBA Coach of the Year by IBM
1996 Coaches gold-medal winning U.S. team in Atlanta Olympics
2000 Joins Toronto Raptors as head coach
the 1972-1973 season Wilkens left coaching behind to
concentrate on playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers, but
he again pulled double duty as player and coach for the
Portland Trail Blazers, beginning in 1974.
Released by Portland in 1977, Wilkens briefly considered
leaving basketball altogether but instead returned to
the SuperSonics as head coach midway through the
1977-1978 season. When Wilkens returned to Seattle, he
took over a team with a dismal record of 5-17, but by
season’s end he had coached the team to a 42-18 record
and into the NBA finals. The following season, the SuperSonics
took the championship, defeating the Washington
Bullets in five games. In his eight seasons with the
SuperSonics, from 1977 until 1985, Wilkens compiled a
record of 357-277 for a winning percentage of 56.3 percent.
At the end of the 1984-1985 season, Wilkens
stepped down as coach of the SuperSonics and became
the team’s general manager for a year.
Signs on as Head Coach of Cavaliers
In June of 1986 Wilkens signed on as head coach of
the Cleveland Cavaliers, a team that had won only twenty-nine
games during the 1985-1986 season. Wilkens
engineered an almost miraculous turnaround for the
Cavaliers, compiling a record of 316-273, for a winning
percentage of 53.7, during his seven seasons with the
team. In 1993, Wilkens, then in his late 50s, decided to
retire from basketball. However, not long thereafter he
received an offer from the Atlanta Hawks that was just
too attractive to refuse. The Hawks signed Wilkens to a
five-year contract, worth $6.5 million. As he had done
before, he quickly turned things around in Atlanta,
coaching the Hawks to a 1994-1995 record of 57-25 and
the Central Division championship. At season’s end,
Wilkens was named NBA Coach of the Year.
Wilkens became the winningest coach in NBA history
on January 6, 1995, when a Hawks 112-90 victory
over the New Jersey Nets gave him his 939th win, topping
the marks set by such legendary NBA coaches as
Arnold ‘Red’ Auerbach, Dick Motta, and Jack Ramsay.
Wilkens told New York’s Amsterdam News that he dedi-
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Related Biography: NBA Scout Marty Blake
Marty Blake, director of scouting for the National Basketball Association
(NBA), is the man most often credited with discovering Lenny Wilkens.
Blake, general manager of the NBA’s Hawks in both St. Louis and Atlanta for
seventeen years, first saw Wilkens perform at the National Invitational Tournament
(NIT) in 1960. He was impressed by the point guard from Brooklyn,
although he admitted a few years ago he had no idea how far Wilkens
would go in professional basketball. Blake was interviewed by Jeffrey Hawk
of the Atlanta Constitution shortly after Wilkens was inducted into the Naismith
Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach in October 1998 (he’d
previously been inducted as a player in 1989). Blake told the Constitution:
“But you couldn’t know all this was going to happen. You knew he was
going to be a great player. You knew he was a coach on the floor at Providence.
I mean, he ran the show. There was no question who was in charge.
You had a sense watching him that Lenny could someday become a coach,
but all this? That was impossible to forecast.”
Involved in basketball for more than half a century, Blake helped
found the Continental Basketball Association in 1946. During his seventeen
years with the Hawks, the team won eight division titles and in 1957-1958
beat the Boston Celtics to cinch the NBA championship. Earlier Blake had
served as president of the Pittsburgh Condors of the American Basketball
Association (ABA), which was later merged into the NBA.
cated his landmark win to Auerbach, the man he replaced
as number one. “It was a testament to him. I still
look upon him as do most of the other coaches in this
league as ‘The Coach.’”
Honored as One of NBA’s Top Players
and Coaches
When the NBA celebrated its 50th anniversary in
1996, Wilkens was the only man to be named both one
of the fifty greatest players and one of the top ten coaches
in league history. He’s also one of only two men (John
Wooden is the other) to be inducted into the Naismith
Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as both player and
coach. Wilkens was inducted into the Naismith Hall of
Fame as a player on May 9, 1989, and as a coach on October
2, 1998.
In 1996, Wilkens coached the USA Basketball Dream
Team to a gold medal victory of 95-69 over Yugoslavia in
the Olympic Summer Games held in Atlanta. Four years
earlier, Wilkens had served as an assistant coach on the
1992 original USA Basketball Dream Team that captured
gold in Barcelona, Spain. Shortly after his first Olympics
coaching experience, he had a brush with life-threatening
illness. During a pickup basketball game in Barcelona,
Wilkens tore an Achilles tendon. As he recovered from
the injury, blood clots from his leg traveled into his lungs,
forcing hospitalization and jeopardizing his life. He later
told the Akron Beacon Journal: “I think that was the first
time I realized my own mortality. I was always healthy.
Now I see how fragile it is. I felt vulnerable.”
Coaches Hawks to Eastern
Conference Semifinals
During the 1996-1997 season, Wilkens, with the help
of newly signed center Dikembe Mutombo, molded the