To commemorate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the NBA, the NBA officially selected 75 superstars. Ranked 75th is Lenny Wilkens.
Lenny Wilkens, male, born on October 28, 1937 in Brooklyn, New York, USA, is a 186cm tall and 80kg point guard. He was selected to the NBA All-Star Team nine times, the first NBA head coach to win more than 1,000 games on the court, and the head coach of the "Dream Three Team" in 1996, leading the team to win the Olympic gold medal in his hometown of Atlanta. In 1989, he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
The 1960 NBA Draft was selected by the St. Louis Hawks in Round 1, 6th, and Wilkens didn't know if he would survive in the NBA. He missed the first game of the team's regular season, and after watching the team's second game against the Boston Celtics, he believed he was better than the team's current defenders on the field. So he went to the team's training camp and won the team's starting position.
As a rookie, Lenny Wilkens averaged 11.7 points per game, ranking 4th on the team, and the Hawks won the Western Conference championship, but in the finals against the Celtics, they eventually lost 1-4.
His second year, the St. Louis Eagles, had a frustrating season in 1961-62, when their regular season ended with a plummeting to 29-51 due to injuries and other accidents, placing them fourth in the West. Experienced defender John McCarthy missed 65 games with a leg injury, Roviratan missed 40 and Larry Foust missed 23. Worst of all for him was that Wilkens only played 20 games because he couldn't avoid military training at Fort Lee in Virginia at the time. In those 20 games, he averaged 18.2 points and 5.8 assists per game. The Eagles lost the chance to play in the playoffs, which also left the team with the only time in eight seasons with Wilkens that the team did not make the playoffs.
Wilkens returned to the regular season in 1962-63, full of confidence and wanted to make a big splash in the new season, when he averaged 11.8 points and 5.1 assists per game, and was selected to the All-Star Game for the first time in his NBA career. He then led the Hawks to the playoffs for six consecutive seasons, starting in 1963, but unfortunately the Hawks did not have a chance to return to the Finals. Wilkens was named to the NBA All-Star Game five times in six seasons and completed his best season in 1967-68, averaging 20 points and 8.3 assists per game, and was the only one in the MVP of the Year to Wilt Chamberlain.
After that season, however, the Hawks traded Wilkens to the Seattle Supersonics in exchange for Walter Hazzard. The Supersonics are a new team that has just entered its second season in the NBA, where to start a new glory and where to plant the seeds of a coach.
With the help of Wilkens, the team achieved a record of 30 wins and 52 losses. Wilkens averaged 22.4 points and 8.2 assists per game. Then the supersonic general manager approached him and said we want you to coach part-time. Because he would be much more tired than just being a player, he hesitated and finally agreed.
Three seasons later, the Supersonics led by Wilkens finished the regular season with 47 wins and 35 losses, with a winning percentage of more than 50 percent, for the first time in the team's history. He continued to play his part on the court as a player, topping the league in total numbers of assists in the 1969–70 and 1971–72 quarters. But after the novelty, Wilkens began to feel nervous. "I started to realize that I had to give a lot to be a great coach," he told a reporter at HOOP magazine. "After a short time, we need to start doing more in the league, exercising more maturely in the traps, in the joint defense. We find that young players come into the league, but they don't fully understand the meaning of the game. So it takes us to teach them a lot of things and help them understand where they are, and I started to realize that I couldn't possibly do two jobs at the same time.
Then the team told him you could only choose between the player and the coach. He ultimately chose to continue playing on the field in his team uniform; he told the management that he would be loyal to the team no matter who was the next coach.
At the age of 35, the team traded him away, a move that made fans furious. On the day the deal was announced, 200 supersonic fans signed a petition that read, "If Lenny is gone, we'll stay home forever and never come to the team's arena again." "It's enough to see how the fans like him.
The team traded him to the Cavaliers, then to the Blazers, where he retired.
After announcing his retirement in 1975, Wilkens remained with the Trail Blazers, coaching the team for one season, leading the Trail Blazers, centered on Bill Walton, to a 37-45 record in the 1975–76 season.
He then returned to his most popular place, Seattle, where he worked as an administrator. However, after 22 games in the 1977-78 season, the team achieved only a bad 5-17 result under Bob Hopkins, which made Wilkens the team's head coach. Later, under the leadership of Wilkens, the team completed a big comeback and finally reached the finals. The following season, they won the NBA championship in the Finals against the Washington Bullets, led by legendary superstars Ervin Hayes and Wes Unseld. Began a legendary life of coaching career.
He then coached several teams, including the Cleveland Cavaliers, Atlanta Hawks, Toronto Raptors, New York Knicks and many more. He was also the assistant coach and head coach of the two Dream teams in 1992 and 1996. On January 6, 1995, Wilkens overtook former Boston Celtics head coach "Cardinal" Red Auerbach to become the most winning coach in history. On March 1 of the following year, Wilkens became the first coach in history to win 1,000 games. He has been coaching in the NBA for over 30 years, a record in NBA history.
Throughout the history of the NBA, his career is also brilliant enough, he seems to be born as a coach, as a short player on the court he can reinvent the team, becoming a coach seems to find the true meaning of life.