said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cHe influenced the lives of countless young people as well as generations of players and coaches who considered Lenny not only a great teammate or coach but also an extraordinary mentor who led with integrity and true class.\u201d<\/p>\nWilkens had an illustrious playing career that spanned 15 seasons from 1960 to \u201875. He played for the Hawks, SuperSonics, Cavaliers and Trail Blazers. Wilkens, a talented playmaking guard, was a nine-time All-Star and led the league in assists in both the 1969-70 and 1971-72 seasons.<\/p>\n
During the later stages of his career, Wilkens became a player-coach in Seattle and Portland. He would later become a full-time NBA coach, and won a championship with the Sonics in 1979. <\/p>\n
His coaching career lasted even longer than his playing career, as he coached a total of 32 seasons in the NBA. In addition to the championship in 1979, Wilkens was named Coach of the Year in 1994, when he led the Hawks to a 57\u201325 record as the No. 1 seed in the East. No coach in NBA history has overseen more games than Wilkens (2,487), and he\u2019s third all-time in wins with 1,332, behind only Don Nelson and Gregg Popovich. <\/p>\n
Wilkens is one of five players ever to be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach, having been part of elite company that includes John Wooden, Bill Sharman, Tom Heinsohn, and Bill Russell. Wilkens was inducted as a player in 1989, and later as a coach in 1998. He was inducted for a third time in 2010 as an assistant coach for his work with the 1992 U.S. Olympic team, the iconic \u201cDream Team.\u201d<\/p>\n
More NBA on Sports Illustrated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Basketball Hall of Famer and NBA legend Lenny Wilkens died Sunday at the age of 88. \u201cLenny Wilkens…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-274455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}