Lenny Wilkens, N.B.A. Hall of Famer as Both Player and Coach, Dies at 88

Lenny Wilkens, the All-Star N.B.A. point guard of the 1960s and ’70s who became the league’s second-ranking coach in total victories, forging a Hall of Fame career through five decades in pro basketball, has died. He was 88.

Adam Silver, commissioner of the N.B.A., confirmed Mr. Wilkens’s death in a statement. The statement did not specify when or where Mr. Wilkens died, nor did it cite a cause.

Growing up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, Wilkens began playing basketball in Catholic playground leagues, then played for Boys High School in his senior year.

He became an All-American at Providence College and was selected by the St. Louis Hawks in the first round of the 1960 N.B.A. draft. One of the league’s leading playmakers of his time and a strong defensive presence with a nifty left-handed jump shot, he played for 15 seasons, his first eight with the Hawks, and earned All-Star honors nine times.

Wilkens passed Red Auerbach for most N.B.A. coaching victories when his Atlanta Hawks defeated the visiting Washington Bullets in January 1995 for his 939th win. He seldom had star players, in contrast to Auerbach’s molding of a Boston Celtics dynasty with Bill Russell and a host of fellow Hall of Famers. But his insistence on team play and defensive tenacity brought him acclaim among basketball insiders, including Auerbach, who was on hand for Wilkens’s milestone victory.

Wilkens coached six teams over 32 seasons. He won 1,332 games (and lost 1,155), but his victory total was exceeded by Don Nelson’s 1,335 and Gregg Popovich’s 1,390. In his second coaching go-round with the Seattle SuperSonics (which later became the Oklahoma City Thunder), he took them to the 1979 N.B.A. championship and won.

He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in 1989 as a player and again in 1998 as a coach. When the N.B.A. celebrated its 50th season in 1996, he was cited as one of its 50 greatest players and top 10 coaches.

A soft-spoken figure, his expression betraying little emotion as he surveyed the action, Wilkens was a stark contrast to fellow coaches who paced the sidelines, barking instructions.

He might have been overshadowed at times in light of his calm demeanor, but he shrugged that off.

“My personality is not important,” he told The New York Times when his SuperSonics were on the brink of their N.B.A. championship. “I don’t think it has anything to do with the team. I’m as effective as a raving lunatic. Who would you listen to? Yelling and screaming is not my nature. I try to get through to my players in other ways.”

Paul Silas, a Sonics forward on that championship team, described him as “a very, very low‐key guy.”

“Nothing ever seems to excite him,” Silas said. “He doesn’t intimidate players. He never points fingers at individuals, win or lose, which perhaps is his greatest quality.”

His 1979 Sonics had a solid but unspectacular lineup that featured Dennis Johnson and Gus Williams in the backcourt and Jack Sikma, John Johnson, Lonnie Shelton and Silas up front. The team was the underdog in the playoff final against a Washington team led by Elvin Hayes and Wes Unseld, both Hall of Famers. The Bullets had beaten the Sonics in the previous season’s final. But in their second matchup, the Sonics captured the championship in five games.

After coaching the SuperSonics for the first time, beginning in 1969, and the Portland Trail Blazers, and playing for both teams, Wilkens coached the Sonics again, the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Hawks, the Toronto Raptors and the Knicks. He replaced Don Chaney as the New York Knicks’ coach in 2004 in the midst of a losing season and turned around their fortunes, but they lost in the first round of the playoffs. He resigned in January 2005 when the Knicks floundered once more.

He was an assistant coach, under Chuck Daly, for the gold medal-winning Dream Team of pro stars at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and head coach of the second Dream Team, which won gold at the 1996 Atlanta Games.

Leonard Randolph Wilkens was born on Oct. 28, 1937, in Brooklyn. “My father was Black and a chauffeur, but he died when I was five,” Wilkens told Terry Pluto in the N.B.A. oral history “Tall Tales” (1992). “My mother was an Irish Catholic and was left with having to raise five kids. She worked at a candy factory, packing boxes. We also went through a period when we were on public assistance.”

He worked as a grocery stockman when he wasn’t in school and remembered how his mother, Henrietta, “was a strong presence” who kept her family together.

Wilkens, at 6-foot-1, played for three seasons at Providence under Coach Joe Mullaney, averaging nearly 15 points a game, and was named most valuable player of the 1960 National Invitation Tournament at Madison Square Garden. He led the Friars to the championship game, where they were beaten by Bradley University. He graduated with a degree in economics.

At his first Hawks training camp, Wilkens and several other Black players decided to have lunch at a restaurant across the street. “The place was just a greasy spoon, but they wouldn’t serve us,” he recalled. “I had spent my life in the Northeast and I never had it happen to me before. I was both embarrassed and angry, and I just left.”

Wilkens soon proved adept at setting up plays in the frontcourt for Bob Pettit, Cliff Hagan and Clyde Lovellette, all of whom were inducted into the Hall of Fame. He averaged 16.5 points a game, along with 6.7 assists for his career, and led the N.B.A. twice in total assists.

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When Wilkens approached his 939th victory, eclipsing Auerbach, he told The Times how “I maximized the talent I had.”

As for ego-driven players who shunned advice, he said, “I’m not going to embarrass anyone, but I tell them, ‘If you have a problem with me being honest with you, then you’ll have to go someplace else.’”

Alexandra E. Petri contributed reporting.