Welcome to The Althletic's selection of the best 75 players in the history of the NBA's 75th Anniversary Special Edition. Mr. Long will introduce one player at a time in order from back to front, and this list is selected by TA's NBA expert panel!
75th: Lenny Wilkens
Career statistics: 1077 games, averaging 16.5 points, 4.7 rebounds and 6.7 assists per game, shooting 43.2% from the field, 77.4% from the free throws, victory contribution: 95.5, career games for the Hawks (1960-68), Supersonics (1968-72), Cavaliers (1972-74), Blazers (1974-75).
Achievements: In Wilkens' 15-year NBA career, he scored 17,772 points, averaging 16.5 points per game and 7,211 assists. His assists, appearances, playing time and free throw shooting are among the best in NBA history. He played in the NBA All-Star Game nine times and was named MVP at the 1971 All-Star Game in San Diego.
1 NBA championship: 1979 (Seattle Supersonics, coaching status)
9-time NBA All-Star: 1963, 1964, 1965, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1973
1 NBA All-Star Game Most Valuable Player: 1971
NBA Top 50 Superstars: 1996
NBA 75 Superstars: 2021
Basketball Hall of Fame: 1988 (Player Status)
1998 (Coach status)
Early life:
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Lenny Wilkens was a self-disciplined, modest and prudent man from an early age. In my third year of high school, I was persuaded by a good friend to participate in the high school basketball league. Wilkens has since become a rising star in college basketball, not only averaging 15.7 points per game, but also impressing many professional coaches with his defense.
Player period:
As a player, Lenny Wilkens, despite his diminutive stature, made him a giant on the court due to his brilliant basketball skills. His unreserved and personable style of play on the pitch masks many of his achievements. This style of play was also carried into his later coaching career – teamwork offense and defense.
Wilkens' approach allowed him to end up doing even better than he had imagined. On January 6, 1995, during his 22nd N-coaching season, Wilkens became the most-won coach in NBA history, surpassing Celtics legendary coach Cardinal Auerbach with 939 wins. The record came in a game between the Eagles of Wilkens Anders against the Bullets, in which the Eagles won 112:90.
"The Cardinal is a legend, and it's really a great honor to be able to surpass him," said Wilkens, whose focus was on Auerbach while I was in charge, and they thought his record was a myth that would never be broken. They all felt that only he was the No. 1 at that time, and only he could be the best coach. I'm excited to be an NBA head coach, no matter how long it takes. "
Wilkens made another piece of history on March 1, 1996, when he led the Eagles to victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers, making him the first head coach in NBA history to win 1,000 regular season games. He decided to end his coaching career after completing his 30th head coaching season with the Toronto Raptors in 2002-03. He has coached 2,046 regular season games, 164 playoff games and four All-Star games, and is the only coach in NBA history to have more than 2,000 career games.
His 30-year NBA coaching record is only less than that of Major League Baseball's Connie Mack (53 years) and John McGraw (33 years) and Major League Baseball's George Halas (40 years), Curly Lambeau (33 years) and Don Shula (33 years) in major league soccer.
Lenny Wilkens nearly opted out early in his basketball career. Although he entered the Brooklyn High School men's basketball team in high school and appeared in the lineup as the 12th man on the team, Wilkens never played a game with the team in the next two years, because he felt that he had not played enough instead, and he went to play in different Catholic youth organization leagues to improve his skills.
Tommy Davis, a close friend of his time living in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, eventually became a star on Major League Baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers, when Davis encouraged Wilkens to play for the Brooklyn High School boys' basketball team in his fourth year of high school. Wilkens graduated from high school after only half of his last year of high school, missing the chance to compete in the Citywide Championship. But his coach at the Catholic Youth League, Father Thomas Mannion, recommended Wilkens to Joe Mullaney, the coach of the JingYi University basketball team, and won a scholarship for him when he enrolled in the fall of 1956.
Wilkens soon settled himself in Providence, where he led a first-year team that was unbeaten with 23 wins and 0 losses in 1956–57. In the three seasons he played in college, he averaged just 14.9 points per game, but the defensive kung fu he trained since he was a child in New York attracted a lot of attention. Wilkens averaged 15.7 points per game in his junior year of college and led the Providence men's basketball team to the semifinals of the Champions Cup. In his senior year of college in 1959–60, he led the Friars to the final of the NIT Championship, losing to Bradley University, although Wilkens won the MVP award in the cup. At the same time, he was also selected to the First Team of the All-American Team twice during his college years.
Early career:
The St. Louis Hawks drafted Wilkens in the first round of the 1960 NBA Draft. Even after that, Wilkens didn't know if he had the strength to survive in the NBA. He missed the team's first game of the regular season, and after watching the team's second game against the Boston Celtics, he believed he was better than the team's current back-up. In this way, Will Training Ground Camp Commander Training Ground Camp Commander Training Camp, of course, he won a place in the team's starting lineup.
As a rookie, Wilkens averaged 11.7 points per game, ranking 4th on the team behind Bob Petit, Cliff Hagen and Clyde Rovrathan. The Hawks won the Western Conference championship, and in the finals against the Celtics, they eventually lost 1-4.
The St. Louis Eagles had a frustrating 1961-62 season, when their regular season finish plummeted to 29-51 due to injuries and other accidents, placing them in Fourth place in the West. Experienced defender John McCarthy missed 65 games with a leg injury, Roviratan missed 40 and Larry Foust missed 23. But perhaps worst of all, Wilkens played only 20 games because he couldn't avoid going to 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 Hawks lost the chance to playoffs, leaving the team the only time in its eight seasons with Wilkens that the team did not make the playoffs.
Wilkens returned to regularity in the 1962–63 season, and he continued to develop in terms of confidence and the insight necessary to become a team leader. He averaged 11.8 points and 5.1 assists per game that season, making him an All-Star Game for the first time in his NBA career. He 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, a new team that just entered its second season in the NBA, achieved a record of 30 wins and 52 losses with the help of Wilkens. Wilkens averaged 22.4 points and 8.2 assists per game.
Coaching Era:
After retiring from playing, Wilkens continued as a coach for the Portland Trail Blazers. He then coached several teams, including the Seattle SuperSonics, Cleveland Cavaliers, Atlanta Hawks, Toronto Raptors, New York Knicks and 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.
Although Wilkens failed to win the championship as a player, he finally had a taste of his long-cherished wish when he coached the Seattle Supersonics in 1979. Together with the NBA Best Coach Award he received while coaching the Atlanta Hawks in 1994, these almost overshadowed the achievements of his player years: he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in 1988 and was named one of the NBA's 50 biggest stars in 1996.
In Wilkens' coaching career, most of the teams he has led have become temporary powers, such as the Seattle Supersonics for 8 years, 6 playoffs, 1 championship, 357 wins and 277 losses. The Cleveland Cavaliers have been in the playoffs for seven years, with 316 wins and 258 losses. The Atlanta Hawks have been in the playoffs for 7 years, with 310 wins and 232 losses. The Toronto Raptors have been in the playoffs for 3 years, 113 wins, 133 losses and so on. Together with the era when players were also coaches, they coached for a total of 32 years, achieving 1332 wins and 1155 losses, with a winning percentage of 53.6%. His philosophy of leadership is to focus on the team, so many times he can make the team achieve good results without first-class star players. That's one of the reasons why Wilkens quickly became the first Chikatsu coach in history.
In 1997, Wilkens was selected as one of the 10 most famous managers in history, the only legend to be selected as one of the top 50 superstars and 10 famous managers at the same time.
In October 2021, he was selected as one of the NBA's 75th Anniversary All-Time Top 75 Stars.