Unguarded

by Lenny Wilkens

  When I use films—today, it’s videos—I’m very careful how much I have the players watch. Usually, it’s only a quarter of a game. Certainly no more than a half. And I have our video coordinator put together a certain sequence of plays that highlights what I want our team to learn. I might concentrate on how our big men are not blocking out while rebounding, or highlight our ball movement, or something else we needed to do on defense. If I’m meeting with an individual player, I’ll prepare a tape for him to show what I want him to improve in his game. Of course, technology is far advanced today compared to what it was when Bill Fitch had to haul around that clunky projector and all those old reels of game films. You couldn’t put together a tape of nothing but screen-and-roll plays or guys rebounding; you just had to keep rewinding the same play and showing it over and over.

  From Fitch, I saw how effective a game tape can be, because the players see what happened. It’s one thing to tell them that they aren’t hustling back on defense: They may believe you, or maybe not, but when you show them on tape that they’re loafing they can’t deny it. In a case such as this, the picture is worth a million words. Sometimes I don’t have to say much of anything. I’ll call a player in and remind him of something that happened in a game—and show him the tape to make my point. Then I wait to see what he has to say. Rather than having me scream and pound the table, five minutes of tape can speak eloquently about what that player has to do to get better. When he sees it, he knows you’re not just picking on him.

  As a player, I tried not to become too emotional. I wanted to see the game clearly, make decisions based upon what was best for the team. The point guard can’t get caught up in any personal battles on the court: That can destroy the flow of the offense, because you become so intent on scoring—on beating your man—that you take your teammates out of the game. They end up as spectators. For a point guard, that’s a cardinal sin. When I played, my goal wasn’t just to play the best that I could, but to get all my teammates to perform at the top of their games, too.

  But when the Cavs played in Seattle for the first time after I was traded, it was a very special evening to me. It was personal. When I came on the court for warmups, I received a standing ovation. I mean, they stood and cheered just because I stepped on the floor. And I was with the other team!

  The Sonics were off to a poor start. Their attendance was down, falling nearly twenty-five hundred a game from my final season as coach. But on this night, a sellout crowd of 13,174 was at the Coliseum.

  And there were signs everywhere:

  THIS IS LENNY’S COUNTRY.

  WITH WILKENS, WE’D WIN.

  WE LOVE YOU, LENNY.

  BOMB TOM! COME HOME LENNY.

  The last sign was a reference to new coach Tom Nissalke, who was taking the heat for the team’s slow start.

  “The funny thing about that game was how the Sonics management had put up all these banners supporting their team,” recalled Joe Tait. “But the fans came in with their homemade signs for Lenny and put them right over the signs the team had made. Then, every time Lenny made a shot in the pregame drills, he got a huge cheer. They went crazy when he made a layup, and the game hadn’t even begun. I knew Lenny was popular in Seattle, but I had no clue how strongly the fans there felt about him. But he was the first great player in the history of that franchise, just as he was for the Cavaliers. And like a lot of cases in Lenny’s career, he never truly was appreciated until he was gone.”

  I had sat out the game before with a sore knee. But when we got to Seattle, the adrenaline took over. I had never been more nervous for a game as a player, but the butterflies also took all the pain in my knee away. I could have been on one leg, but I was going to play! Everywhere I’ve played, fans have been great to me. But I never had a night where I experienced such support, where I felt as if everyone in the stands was my best friend and wanted to carry me to the best performance of my career.

  The fans started all kinds of chants:

  COME HOME, LENNY, COME HOME!

  WE LOVE YOU, LENNY!

  TRADE NISSALKE! TRADE NISSALKE!

  While I’ve never cried in public, this was as close as I came. People cheered whenever I touched the ball. They about tore down the roof when I scored, and they cheered for the Cavs as if we were the home team.

  At halftime, we had a 60-46 lead and we went on to win, 113-107.

  “That game remains one of my favorite memories of Cavs basketball,” said Joe Tait. “Those early Cavs never had support like that at home. The Seattle fans were not about to let Lenny lose to the Sonics. Lenny was like always, cool and collected. He played his usual controlled, savvy game. But on the inside, I knew it had to be a real vindication for him.”

  When it became clear that we had the game in hand, I remember a fan stood up and played “Taps” on his bugle, indicating the Sonics were dead, at least on this night. I did enjoy that. The Sonic players were very friendly to me. I still had a number of friends on that team. But the people from the front office avoided me, as if they were afraid to even speak to me. That was disappointing, after I gave them four very good years.

  Here’s what Gil Lyons wrote in the Seattle Times: “Only the hanging judge was missing as Lenny Wilkens and the Cleveland Cavaliers rode a tidal wave of Seattle cheers to victory over the home-town Sonics in one of the most nerve-shattering sports spectacles of all time.

  “A crowd of 13,174, the second largest home gathering in team history, goaded on the Cavs, booed the Sonics and chanted for Coach Tom Nissalke’s scalp in a spiteful outpouring of vengeance…. Nissalke’s plight might have been eased a trifle had the Sonics escaped their seventh loss in a row, and this one was to a team that had never beaten Seattle before in eight previous tries.

  “Wilkens, whose trade to Cleveland caused the eruption of sympathy and hatred, scored 14 of his 22 points in the first half…. He also contributed nine assists, nine rebounds and four steals.”

  In my first season with the Cavs, I averaged 20 points and 8.4 assists. We won 32 games, up from 23 the season before. Our crowds at that old dungeon of an arena were small, but the fans were very warm to me. I continually grew in admiration for Bill Fitch, as I watched him mature as a coach. I spent one more year in Cleveland, 1973-74, averaging 16.4 points and 7.4 assists. I was now thirtyseven years old, and near the end of my playing career. I wanted another crack at coaching.

  Portland had fired Jack McCloskey and was in the market for a new coach. The Blazers job appealed to me because Portland was very close to my home in Seattle. I also was thinking of retiring as a player. At a charity dinner, Blazers owner Herman Saskowski talked to me all night about taking the Blazers job. Finally, I said I was interested, and I told him to talk to my agent. The Cavaliers allowed me to pursue the opening in Portland, and the Blazers gave me a three-year contract as coach.

  At first, that was all I was supposed to do—coach. But when training camp opened, we had only one veteran guard, Geoff Petrie. The other guards were players such as Phil Lumpkin, Larry Steele, Dan Anderson, and Bernie Fryer, who later became an NBA official. The Blazers front office wanted me to play one more year, and I did so against my better judgment. I knew that coaching was a full-time job—but I also knew that I’d be a better coach if I had a better point guard, and even at the age of thirty-seven, I was the best point guard in camp. Portland added a fourth year to my coaching contract as a way to help convince me to play. We also had just drafted a center out of UCLA named Bill Walton, and I thought it would be fun not only to coach Walton, but to play with him.

  Besides, this team was yet another expansion team. It entered the NBA in 1970, just like the Cavs. In 1973-74, Portland had a 27-55 record. It needed all the help it could get.

  The first time I met Bill Walton, he was in a hospital. That was a perfect symbol of my two years as coach in Portland. Bill had a bone chip floating in his foot, and that was only the start of his physical problems.

  Portland was a difficult situation.
We never knew when Walton would be able to play. He had knee problems in college. He soon developed the stress fractures in his feet that plagued him throughout his career. Because Walton had been such a dominating player at UCLA, the assumption was that we’d immediately become a contender. That assumption led the Blazers to give him a $2.5 million contract, a staggering amount for 1974. But it wasn’t about to happen, not with him hurt, and not with a roster that just wasn’t very deep.

  Walton played only 35 of our 82 games as a rookie. He averaged close to 13 points and 13 rebounds, but there were very few games where he was 100 percent. We never knew if he would be able to play or practice. With Walton out, Sidney Wicks was our most talented player, but the other players considered him selfish. His attitude bothered some of the guys. When your key player is hurt, a team needs to pull together; Wicks would put up good statistics, but he just didn’t make his teammates better. We tried to trade Wicks a couple of times, but the deals all fell through.

  We finished the season with a 38-44 record, up from 27-55 the year before. I had played my last season, averaging only 6.4 points. I realized that I had to concentrate on coaching, and I was looking forward to my second year with the Blazers, especially since Walton was supposed to be healthy.

  But nothing went right.

  We still couldn’t trade Wicks. He wanted his contract renegotiated. The front office refused, and he showed up with an even worse attitude than the year before. He was angry with his teammates whenever he wasn’t getting enough shots, and that made every-one’s life miserable. I learned from dealing with Wicks that when a player is truly unhappy, he makes the other players anxious and easily disgruntled. There’s only one thing you can do: Trade him. Keeping a malcontent around doesn’t make him any better, it just makes the entire situation worse. No matter what you get in return, you benefit from the addition by subtraction.

  In his second year, Walton played in 51 games, but he was only himself in perhaps 30 of those. He couldn’t stay healthy. I sensed that if we could get Walton healed and make a few other moves, Portland was not far from being a contender.

  But the front office was not willing to be patient, at least not with me. We went 37-45, one victory fewer than the season before, still not bad for a team that had never won more than 29 games in a season until I arrived. I thought I’d earned the right to finish off the remaining two years on my contract, because the Blazers were in far better shape than when I arrived. But they let me go, which turned out to be a blessing. It enabled us to move back to Seattle full-time, where my kids were happiest in school and where Marilyn and I felt most comfortable. I was hired by CBS for a year to work on their pro basketball telecasts. It was a good time for me to sit back and watch all the teams in the league without being in the pressure cooker of playing and coaching.

  It also set the stage for me to come home to the Sonics.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  FIVE YEARS LATER, Seattle became Lenny’s Country once again.

  That wasn’t what I was thinking about in May 1977 when Sam Schulman approached me about returning to the Sonics as general manager. I had just finished my first year with CBS. I enjoyed television, but I still wanted to coach again. Bill Russell had just quit as the Sonics general manager and coach, but I didn’t apply for the job; Seattle planned to promote Russell’s assistant, Bob Hopkins, to head coach. Hopkins was also Russell’s cousin.

  I thought I’d work for CBS once again. The last thing I ever expected to be was a general manager, or as my official title stated: Director of Player Personnel.

  I was at a big charity banquet in Seattle when Schulman approached me. We talked about his team, and Sam apologized for how my trade was handled. He explained that he wanted to give Tom Nissalke freedom to build the team in his own way and thought it might be a little difficult with the former head coach still on the roster as a point guard. I understood that part, because as a coach, I’d want that same control. But Sam also knew that his front office didn’t level with me about the deal to Cleveland. He admitted it was a huge mistake.

  In my last season with the Sonics, their record was 47-35.

  Nissalke didn’t even survive his first season, as the record dropped to 26-56. Russell coached the team for four years, and the Sonics’ best record was 43-39.

  So my 47-35 season remained the best in the ten-year history of the franchise as I talked to Schulman at that banquet. I knew the fans were unhappy, that attendance was down, and some of the players were disenchanted. Russell had seemed to lose interest in coaching toward the end of his tenure, and the Sonics were coming off a 40-42 season.

  “You do need help,” I told Schulman.

  “No kidding,” he said. “That’s why I want you to be a part of the organization, but not as a coach.” Schulman said he was committed to Hopkins. “He did a lot of the coaching for Russell, and he deserves a chance.”

  I didn’t know Hopkins, and I wasn’t after his job. Even though I’d never considered being a general manager, when Schulman asked me if I wanted that job, I was intrigued. I still had a home in Seattle. Despite the bitter ending, the Sonics were a team that was close to my heart. I liked the idea of being in charge of the basketball operations, of putting together the kind of team that could win.

  Over and over, Schulman told me that they already had a coach, that they really liked Bob Hopkins, that my job was in the front office.

  “Sam, I do understand,” I said.

  Under the old system, Russell had been both GM and coach. Zollie Volchok was in charge of the business side of the front office. Schulman wanted Zollie to keep his position, but for me to take care of the basketball side. I met with Hopkins and assured him that I was there to help any way I could. He seemed content with the changes. Besides, he had never played or been a head coach in the NBA before, so this was a tremendous opportunity for him.

  On May 13, 1977, the new front-office setup was announced and was greeted enthusiastically by the media and the fans. I was really excited. Part of me always assumed that somehow, some way, I’d end up back with the Sonics. Seattle really did feel like “Lenny’s Country” to me.

  When I took over the front office, the first question I asked was, “Where are we?”

  By that I meant, where was the team in terms of trades? Draft preparation? Contracts with the players?

  I was told the Sonics were close to trading guard Fred Brown to the Lakers for Earl Tatum.

  “You mean you’re trading Fred Brown straight up for this guy?” I asked.

  Yes, they were.

  “No, you’re not,” I said. “I’ve seen Earl Tatum. He’s not the kind of player you think. You better get a lot more than Earl Tatum for Fred Brown. And as far as that goes, Fred Brown is a great, great shooter. How many guys in the NBA can shoot like Fred Brown? You don’t just give away a guy like him.”

  I took over the trade talks.

  “Wait a minute,” said Lakers general manager Bill Sharman. “Bob Hopkins is all for this deal.”

  “Bob Hopkins is not the general manager,” I said.” I am. And as long as I’m general manager, we are not trading Fred Brown for Earl Tatum. If you want to talk about a first-round pick and another player—then, maybe, we’ll talk about Fred Brown.”

  “But your coach…” Bill said. “The deal doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “The way you want it, there is no deal.”

  “That’s how we want it,” he said.

  “No deal,” I said.

  That was one of those cases where some of the best trades are the ones you never make.

  I later discovered that Russell and Fred Brown didn’t get along. Russell thought Brown was overweight. Brown had one of those fireplug bodies, and he had to watch his weight. I also knew that if you talked to Fred the right way, he would get himself in good shape. The main thing was that Fred Brown could shoot the basketball, and I wanted a shooter like that on my team.

  Next, the Sonics were thinking of trading Tom Burleson, their seven
-foot-four center. Burleson was not especially mobile. He averaged 9.7 points and 6.7 rebounds. But he was seven-foot-four and he did block shots.

  “We have a deal for Burleson pending,” they told me.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “George Johnson,” they said.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “George Johnson is not a bad player, but he’s only about six-foot-eight. He’s not a center. If we trade Burleson, we lose our defensive presence in the middle.”

  Obviously, the people in Seattle thought they were limited as a team with Burleson at center, and I didn’t disagree with that. But I also knew that if you were going to improve in the pivot, you didn’t just trade your current center for a thin, six-foot-eight forward. You had to get a center in return.

  “What about Marvin Webster?” I asked.

  I liked Webster, who was a physical, six-foot-ten presence in the middle. He had long arms. He liked to block shots, and his nickname in college was “The Human Eraser.” He also was a good rebounder, and he didn’t need the ball a lot on offense. He was content to let his teammates score. In my mind, he was like Burleson, only better.

  I talked to Denver about Webster and Burleson, and the Nuggets were receptive. Webster’s contract was up at the end of the season and they were concerned that they couldn’t sign him. They wanted to trade him a year early, to make sure they at least received something in return. Contract considerations also were behind our wanting to move Burleson: He had five years left on a deal that looked very expensive, at least compared to his production. As I talked to Denver, I realized they were very anxious to move Webster. I started asking for other players in the deal, especially Paul Silas. I had played with Silas in St. Louis, and I knew he was another tough rebounder. I could see us becoming a team that would really defend the basket and get the ball off the boards if we could add Silas and Webster. I also knew that Denver was disenchanted with Silas. They thought he was washed up, but I knew that they didn’t use Silas correctly. They wanted him to score. Even in the prime of his career, Silas was never an offensive player; now that he was past thirty, he wasn’t going to suddenly turn into an offensive machine. But we didn’t need Silas to score, just to defend and rebound. I also saw Silas as a veteran coming off the bench, maybe playing half the game. We threw around a few more names, and Denver agreed to send us Webster, Silas, and Willie Wise (a throw-in who was at the end of his career) for Burleson and Bobby Wilkerson. Denver wanted Dennis Johnson, but I thought Dennis had a tremendous future, especially compared to Wilkerson.