Consistency Kept Wilkens’ Fire Alive

What’s amazing about Lenny Wilkens’ record for regular-season victories by an NBA coach is that so many of his teams were just plain mediocre.

Cynics suggest that Wilkens surpassed Red Auerbach’s 938 career wins Friday night simply because of longevity. This is Wilkins’ 22nd season as an NBA head coach. Auerbach left the bench after 20 seasons.

The cynics are wrong. Wilkens is a fine coach, a man respected by players, coaches, officials and administrators throughout the league. Nobody survives in this business as long as Wilkens has without talent.

The fact remains, however, that Wilkens has piled up victories without piling up championships. He has won one NBA title, in 1979 with Seattle. He has reached the NBA Finals twice, in 1978 and 1979 with Seattle. His ‘78 SuperSonics lost to Washington. He has won a division championship twice, in 1979 with Seattle and 1994 with Atlanta.

Wilkens’ record is a testament to consistency. He has posted 13 winning seasons. He never had a great team that won 60 games. Three of his teams won 57 games - in Cleveland in 1989 and 1992, and Atlanta in ‘94.

The 1979 Seattle team that beat Washington in the Finals won only 52 regular-season games.

Conversely, Wilkens never coached an abysmal team. His worst seasons were in 1985 in Seattle and 1987 in Cleveland. Each year he finished 31-51.

As a playoff coach, Wilkens is 60-61. He has reached the conference finals four times, three with Seattle and once with Cleveland. He has lost in the first round five times.

Wilkens deserves special praise for breaking Auerbach’s record because for the first four years he coached, he still played. He was a player-coach for Seattle in 1970, ‘71 and ‘72 and with Portland in 1975. As Dave Cowens has said, being a playercoach is not easy.

And without Red Auerbach, cigars would have little meaning for New England sports fans.Wilkens, aware of tradition and gracious as usual, paid tribute to Auerbach on Friday night by lighting up a cigar when Atlanta’s victory over Washington was secure. Wilkens does not smoke, so the gesture was purely a recognition of Auerbach’s prominent position in the history of the game.

Wilkens watch

While the world waited for Wilkens to get that elusive 939th victory, there were these developments:

Wilkens, 57, was interviewed by filmmaker and fellow Brooklyn native Spike Lee, who is making a movie about Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s color barrier.

The Hawks brought a big box of baseball caps with the number 939 emblazoned on them to Cleveland, but the box was sent to the wrong hotel room, prompting a frantic, ultimately successful search.

Two cakes baked to commemorate the occasion didn’t travel, either. One was eaten by the security staff in Cleveland, the second consumed on the team charter from New York.

The NBA made plans for commissioner David Stern to present Wilkens with a large crystal sculpture of himself with a player from each of his four coaching stops: Bill Walton of Portland, Dennis Johnson of Seattle, Mark Price of Cleveland and Mookie Blaylock of Atlanta.

Wilkens donated a $20,000 check from the NBA saluting his record victory to the Odessa Brown Children’s Home in Seattle.

Trivia time

Two of the three highest-paid players this season no longer play in the NBA. Who are they?

Around the league

Detroit guard Lindsey Hunter’s broken right foot is so much worse than expected that the Pistons will be lucky if he returns by March… . Muggsy Bogues, Larry Johnson and Alonzo Mourning were memorialized in a nine-story, 21,000-squarefoot mural in Charlotte. For perspective, Mourning’s eyeball is 4 feet wide, but no one could explain how Bogues made it past the fourth story… . The Hornets’ Kenny Gattison will have surgery Tuesday to correct a career-jeopardizing cervical spine contusion in his neck… . Houston guard Sam Cassell is being sued by parents who sent their kids to his summer camp on the promise that stars such as Bogues would be there. The only advertised “celebrity” to actually show up? John Lucas.

Trivia answer

Earvin “Magic” Johnson is the league’s highest-paid player this season at $14.6 million. James Worthy is third at $7.2 million.

Both are retired, but together earn more than the rosters of 13 teams.