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79 Lenny Wilkens Basketball September 3, 1990 Cleveland, Ohio Throughout a National Basketball Association (nba) career spanning over four decades, Lenny Wilkens distinguished himself as a successful player, coach, and administrator. Wilkens began in the nba as a first-round draft pick out of Providence College in 1960. He played a combined fifteen years for the St. Louis Hawks, Seattle SuperSonics, Cleveland Cavaliers, and Portland Trail Blazers. Wilkens became one of the first three African American player-coaches in the nba in the 1960s era.1 He became head coach of the Seattle SuperSonics in 1977 and the next year (1978–79) led that team to its only championship. Included among his numerous awards and accolades are an All-Star Game mvp trophy (1971), a Coach of the Year award (1994), and two Olympic gold medals (as assistant coach and head coach for the 1992 and 1996 games, respectively). In 1995, he surpassed the legendary Red Auerbach as the winningest coach in nba history. His outstanding success as both a player and coach is reflected in his election as one of the Ten Greatest Coaches in nba History, as well as one of the league’s Fifty Greatest Players, on the nba’s fiftieth anniversary. He is the first African American to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player (1989) and as a coach (1998). Most recently, he served as vice chairman for the Seattle SuperSonics, a position from which he resigned in July of 2007.2 80 lenny wilkens Childhood and College Years I was born on October 28, 1937, in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York. I grew up in a mixed neighborhood. My dad was a chauffeur and my mother was a housewife. She took care of the family. My dad died when I was five, and at that point my mother had to get part-time work and assistance from welfare to raise her four children. I have two sisters and a brother, and I later gained a stepbrother as well. I guess we were poor in that we didn’t have a lot of things, but we had each other. The one thing my mother stressed constantly was staying in school and getting an education, so we would be able to function in society. She felt that without an education, we would not get anywhere. There were a lot of things to distract from education, because there were gangs where we lived, and if you went from one neighborhood to the next, you might have to fight your way back. That was part of growing up and it was something we accepted. After my dad died, there were a lot of times when we just didn’t have things. It was important that my sisters dressed halfway decent. My brother would wear whatever was leftover from me. There were times when we didn’t have the nicest clothes, and I remember people would comment about it, both black and white. I can remember going to a cotillion that was put on by the Girlfriends, a black group out of New York, and they always seemed to look at me strangely as though they were thinking, “Who’s your father? What’s your background? Where are you from?” As if any of those things are the measure of a human being. I resented that very much. From that point on I made a pact with myself. One, I would never want for anything ; and two, I was going to be successful, because I would have that drive. I wanted to be a positive influence on other African Americans, particularly young people, because they need positive images. They need someone they can look up to. That is when I decided how to live my life. And I haven’t wavered from that. It was a burning desire, and it motivated me through college and into my career in professional sports. I graduated from high school mid-year in January 1956, and I worked from January to September at Montgomery Ward. I played in some postseason tournaments for high school kids and based on that, and a letter written by Father Thomas Mannion from my parish, I was eventually given a scholarship to Providence College. I was very fortunate to get an athletic scholarship, because I couldn’t have afforded to go to college otherwise. Growing up in Brooklyn and attending Holy Rosary, a boys’ high school, I didn’t notice...

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