On November 29, 2006 he was hired as vice chairman of the Seattle SuperSonics' ownership group,[1] and was later named the Sonics' President of Basketball Operations on April 27, 2007.[2] On July 6, 2007 Wilkens resigned from the Sonics organization. Wilkens currently is seen on Northwest FSN Studio as a College Hoops analyst and occasionally appears on Northwest College Hoops at game nights
Early life
Wilkens grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.[3] His father was African American and his mother was Irish.[4] Wilkens was raised in the Roman Catholic faith.[4]
At Boys High School, Wilkens was a basketball teammate of longtime Major League Baseball star Tommy Davis.
Playing career
Wilkens was a two-time All-American (1959 and 1960) at Providence College. He led the team to their first NIT appearance in 1959, and to the NIT finals in 1960. When he graduated, Wilkens was, with 1,193 points, the second-ranked scorer in Friar history (he has since dropped to twentieth as of 2005). In 1996, Wilkens' #14 jersey was retired by the college, the first alumnus to receive such an honor.Wilkens was drafted sixth overall by the St. Louis Hawks in the 1960 NBA Draft. He played for the Hawks (1960-1968), Seattle SuperSonics (1968-1972), Cleveland Cavaliers (1972-1974) and Portland Trail Blazers (1974–1975).
Wilkens placed second to Wilt Chamberlain in the 1967–1968 MVP balloting. Wilkens was a nine-time NBA All-Star, and was named the 1971 NBA All-Star Game MVP in 1971. He led the league in assists in the 1969–70 season, and at the time of his retirement, Wilkens was the NBA's second all-time leading playmaker, behind only Oscar Robertson.
Coaching career
From 1969–1972 with Seattle, and in his one season as a player with Portland, he was a player-coach.He retired from playing in 1975 and was the full-time coach of the Trail Blazers for one more season. After a season off from coaching, he again became coach of the SuperSonics when he replaced Bob Hopkins who was fired 22 games into the 1977-1978 season. He coached in Seattle for eight seasons (1977-1985), winning his (and Seattle's) only NBA Championship in 1979. He would go on to coach Cleveland (1986–1993), Atlanta (1993–2000), Toronto (2000–2003) and New York (2004–2005).
The Hall of Famer was named head coach of the New York Knicks on January 15, 2004. After the Knicks' slow start to the 2004–2005 season, Wilkens resigned from the team on January 22, 2005.
Accomplishments
He retired with 1,332 wins and 1,155 losses. He is second behind former Boston Celtics player and former NBA coach Don Nelson for most wins. Wilkens' accomplishments come from his 35 years of coaching in the NBA, among the longest tenures in the league.He coached the Olympic Champion Men's Basketball team in 1996 and was an assistant coach on the 1992 USA Olympic Dream Team.
Wilkens is one of three players to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach (the other two being John Wooden and Bill Sharman), joining the Hall in 1989 as a player and 1998 as a coach. In 1996, the NBA named Wilkens one of its 50 Greatest Players and 10 Greatest Coaches; Wilkens is the only person named to both lists. He is also a member of the Providence College Athletic Hall of Fame.
In 1994 Coach Wilkens was presented the United States Sports Academy's Amos Alonzo Stagg Coaching Award for his outstanding achievement as a coach.
Quotes
- "I learned my basketball on the playgrounds of Brooklyn. Today, being a playground player is an insult. It means all you want to do is go one-on-one, it means your fundamentals stink and you don't understand the game. But the playgrounds I knew were tremendous training grounds."
- "Show people how to have success and then you can push their expectations up."
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