How Lenny Wilkens will forever be part of Seattle, Climate Pledge Arena

SEATTLE – Lenny Wilkens’ eyes flicker and his soft voice rises to an occasional crescendo as he tells the stories that have shaped his life.

“Growing up in Brooklyn, I used to deliver groceries to Jackie Robinson,” he said. “Oh yeah, that’s when I got to know him. I remember what he went through in (being the first Black player to integrate Major League Baseball) and I asked him how he did it.

“He said to me, ‘They can’t get here. Nobody can get here.’ (Wilkens said pointing to his head.) And I was so impressed. What a helluva player he was. This guy played college football and he could play a little basketball, too.”

It’s an unusually warm and beautiful sun-kissed afternoon when Wilkens walks into an upscale Bellevue restaurant not far from his Medina home where he settled down years ago.

Dressed in a black sports coat, the unassuming 87-year-old strolls to the back toward his favorite room, which is dimly lit and adorned with vintage photos of Seattle sports teams on the walls, including several pictures of a young Wilkens wearing a No. 19 Sonics jersey.

We’re here to talk about his extraordinary life, particularly his 57-year love affair with the Pacific Northwest and his 14-year association that spans four decades with the Sonics, the NBA franchise that’s defined his basketball career.

He’s held several roles during his Sonics tenure including a three-time All-Star point guard and Seattle’s first superstar; a player/coach who launched his career as a bench boss; two stints as general manager; the first coach to bring a major professional sports championship to Seattle; and an ownership executive.

It’s no wonder Wilkens will be honored Saturday with a statue outside Climate Pledge Arena where his teams once ruled the NBA, and not far from Lenny Wilkens Way, which was named after him four years ago.

“I’m just overwhelmed,” he said. “It’s not something I ever thought much about or anything like that. This has been a great community. I got to know people here.

“When I first got here, I thought about going back East, but we liked it out here my wife and I … and decided it would be a wonderful place to make a home.”

Over five decades, Wilkens’ impact on his adopted home Seattle is immeasurable and his list of accomplishments highlights a legacy that transcends the court.

• He’s the only three-time inductee in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as a player, coach and member of the 1992 Dream Team.

• He’s been a fearless pioneer who broke racial barriers and became the second Black coach in NBA history.

• He’s a record-breaker who retired with more wins (1,332) than any coach in NBA history, and is now third on the list.

• He’s been a renowned philanthropist as the Lenny Wilkens Foundation raised over $10 million for the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic in Seattle’s Central District.

• He’s a devoted family man who’ll celebrate his 63rd anniversary to wife Marilyn next month. The couple have three children and seven grandchildren.

• And he’s been an inspiration and icon to generations of former players and basketball fans.

“Coach Lenny Wilkens is one of the greatest leaders the NBA game has ever seen,” former Sonics great Nate McMillan said. “(He) was a great player, great coach and even better man.”

During a 2022 interview, former NBA great Jamal Crawford, who grew up in Seattle, called Wilkens “The Blueprint” who taught him “when you have an opportunity with a platform, how to give back to the community and make an impact.”

When that story is relayed to Wilkens, he smiles and said: “That’s what it’s about, impacting young people and making a difference in their lives. I hope I’ve done that.”

There’s a camera crew, hired by Isaiah Thomas, the former Washington Husky and NBA star who was also influenced by Wilkens, that’s setting up outside the restaurant and preparing to film a documentary on the man everyone affectionately calls “Coach.”

Over the next two hours they wait while Wilkens enjoys a leisurely lunch and recounts tales that many have never heard between bites of his favorite meal – crab benedict and sips of orange juice.

For instance, there’s the time he played in a 3-on-3 tournament in Las Vegas with famed musician Marvin Gaye.

“He couldn’t play a lick,” Wilkens said. “He loved being out there, but yeah, he wasn’t very good.”

Or the time he declined a request to host a fundraiser at his home for an unheralded Illinois senator named Barack Obama who was running for president in 2008.

“He felt he kind of knew me because we’re both left-handed, he likes basketball and thinks he plays like me,” Wilkens said. “But I said no. I really did. I said, I don’t know you. It’s kind of funny now when you think about it. But we later hit it off.”

Wilkens met Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Birmingham, Alabama, and Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu in South Africa. He’s been to the White House for chats with Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Joe Biden and Obama.

“I’ve been fortunate to live the life that I have,” Wilkens said. “I thank God and feel very blessed to see the things I’ve seen and meet the people I’ve met. … But the biggest part, I feel I’ve been able to help people, especially young people. That’s given me a joy I can’t describe.”

It truly is remarkable how a young biracial boy raised in tenement apartments in Brooklyn, New York, at the end of the Great Depression lived through World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam War, and overcame legalized segregation while embarking on an improbable basketball journey.

Born on Oct. 28, 1937, Leonard Randolph Wilkens Jr. was named after his father, a chauffeur who died from ulcer complications when Wilkens was 5 years old and charged with supporting his mother and taking care of his three siblings.

In his autobiography “Unguarded: My Forty Years Surviving the NBA” published in 2000, Wilkens wrote his aunt told him: “You’re going to be the man of the house now. … I had no idea what it meant, I just knew that on the day my father died, everything had changed – and more was expected of me.

“I was his son, and I’ll always be his son. That much I know. And his absence had a far more profound impact on me than his presence, because his being gone meant that I had to grow up, and grow up quick. But his being my father also left me a legacy. Because my father was an African-American, so am I. At least that’s how the world sees me.”

Wilkens credits his white Irish Catholic mother Henrietta, who took a part-time job at a candy factory, and her prayers for keeping the family together.

When he was 10, Wilkens began working at a neighborhood grocery story to help make ends meet when he met Robinson.

Wilkens honed his basketball skills on the New York City playgrounds and didn’t play in high school until his senior year. Not surprisingly, he didn’t receive a recruiting letter from any college and credits his childhood priest Father Thomas Mannion, a mentor and father figure, for helping him get a scholarship to Providence.

That’s when Wilkens’ basketball career took off.

He became a two-time All-American while leading the Friars to their first NIT appearance in 1959 and the NIT Finals in 1960. He was the No. 2 scorer in school history with 1,193 points when he graduated with a degree in economics.

The St. Louis Hawks selected him sixth overall in the first round of the 1960 NBA draft when there were just eight teams in the league.

Without an agent, Wilkens negotiated his first professional contract and persuaded the Hawks to give him an $8,000 salary with a $1,500 signing bonus and a no-cut clause.

His first purchase: a 1959 Chevy Impala for $100.

As a rookie, Wilkens averaged 11.7 points on 42.5% shooting, 4.5 rebounds and 2.8 assists and helped the Hawks to the NBA Finals, where they lost 4-1 to a powerhouse Boston Celtics team led by Tom Heinsohn, Bob Cousy, Bill Russell and coach Red Auerbach.

Wilkens, who joined the ROTC at Providence and served as a Second Lieutenant in the Army, missed most of his second season in the NBA while completing his military service. He was stationed at Fort Lee, Virginia, and played for the Hawks on the weekends while appearing in just 20 games.

“I missed something like a year and half of basketball,” Wilkens said. “Some guys might have been a little upset, but I wasn’t. To me, it was part of serving our country. I didn’t mind at all. That’s what you did at that time. … If not for basketball, I would have stayed in the Army and made a career out of it.”

Wilkens spent his first eight NBA seasons with the Hawks where he was a five-time All-Star. His relationship with the team fractured following the 1967-68 season when he averaged 20 points, 5.3 rebounds, 8.3 assists and finished second in the MVP voting.

When the Hawks moved to Atlanta in 1968, the team couldn’t agree on a new deal with Wilkens and traded him to the Sonics for Walt Hazzard.

“When I first came to Seattle, my wife Marilyn and I met two people,” Wilkens said. “A gal named Freddie Mae Gautier and Toby Burton. They were pillars of the community and very involved, and I was impressed with the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic, so I decided to make it my charity.

“I saw how Odessa Brown treated young people, I was blown away because these are tomorrow’s doctors, lawyers and politicians and they need to know that they belong and they can be a part of the community. So, that was the thing that really attracted me to Seattle.”

Wilkens averaged 19.5 points on 43.6% shooting from the field, 5.0 rebounds and 9.0 assists in 308 games during his four-year playing career with the Sonics.

After an unpopular trade to Cleveland in 1972 and retiring in 1975, which ended a 15-year playing career, the 40-year-old Wilkens returned to the Sonics in 1977 as director of player personnel.

When the Sonics stumbled to a 5-17 start, Wilkens took over as coach and finished 42-18 while making an improbable run to the NBA Finals where the Sonics lost 4-3 in a seven-game series to the Washington Bullets.

After a spectacular 52-30 season, the Sonics met the Bullets in the Finals the next year, and this time they dominated Washington 4-1 to win the championship. Dennis Johnson claimed the Finals MVP while Gus Williams led all scorers in the series with 29.0 points per game.

“I got lucky because they allowed me to do the things I wanted to do,” Wilkens said, noting moves that acquired free agent Williams, a trade for forward Marvin Webster and Paul Silas, blocking a deal that would have dealt Fred Brown and acquiescing to Slick Watts’ trade request. “The guys allowed me to coach them because I talked to them.

“The guys were willing to go along. It wasn’t hard because I respected them and they respected me. We used to talk about it all the time. Respect is a two-way street, and they bought into it.”

After winning the title, the Sonics fell to the Los Angeles Lakers in the conference finals the next year, which symbolized a changing of the guard in the West. Led by Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the Lakers made eight trips to the NBA Finals and won five titles during the 1980s.

“We played selfless basketball, and like it or not, the league was changing and has changed to where you needed one or two superstars if you were going to win,” said Wilkens, who noted the balanced scoring on the Sonics’ 1978-79 championship team. “I loved how we played. Nobody cared who got the glory. Guys played for each other, moved the ball and to get the best shot possible.

“And defensively, we went after you. We had guys like DJ, JJ (John Johnson) and Paul who really took pride in defense and got the other guys taking pride in it as well.”

Wilkens, who had a 478-402 record during 11 seasons with the Sonics, relinquished coaching duties in 1985 and became the team’s vice president and general manager. He left Seattle in 1986 to resume a coaching career that included stops in Cleveland, Atlanta, Toronto and New York.

Wilkens briefly returned to the Sonics as vice chairman and president of basketball operations in 2006 before resigning eight months later following a fallout with team owner Clay Bennett.

When the topic switches one last time to his legacy and a forthcoming statue that’ll stand as a tribute to his service to the Sonics and the Seattle community, Wilkens smiles politely.

“Just somebody who made a difference,” he said. “I was able to make a difference with young people. I don’t feel anybody owes me anything, you know. But I was here.

“I was here.”