Unguarded

by Lenny Wilkens

  A blood clot in each lung.

  “Good thing your wife called and you got here when you did,” the doctor said, “or you’d have been in real trouble.”

  My wife had already been telling me that she saved my life by calling when she did, and it turned out she was right.

  Even though I had the two blood clots, I thought everything was under control. I was in the hospital. The doctors knew what the problem was, and they would treat me. A couple of days, I’d be out of there.

  Guess again.

  I felt rotten. Tired. Weak. Sick. I had a headache that felt like a guy inside my skull trying to knock his way out with an axe. On the first day, they brought me food, I ate it—and vomited. After that, I didn’t want to eat. When you don’t eat, you feel weak and sick. But when I did eat, I got sick to my stomach. So what was I supposed to do? I began to realize that I was in pretty bad shape, much worse than even Marilyn knew. They wanted me to take pain medicine, but I refused. The first time I took it, I got sick to my stomach, really bad cramps, which was worse than the pain from the blood clots. But the pain kept me from sleeping. No matter how I moved my body in that bed, it hurt. No matter how I tried to rest, it hurt. No matter what I did, it hurt. Finally, a nurse—whose brother, coincidentally, I had met some twenty years earlier—suggested that we cut the dosage of the painkiller with distilled water. That worked, and I finally was able to get some sleep. The next morning, that same nurse came to see me. She had a picture of her brother and me taken about twenty years ago at the Seattle airport.

  But no one really sleeps well in the hospital because every four hours they wake you up for something—take your temperature, give you a pill. Then they ask if you’re resting. Well, you were resting until they woke you up.

  During my first four days in the hospital, they had me using a bedpan. That was degrading. You feel like your dignity is gone. You also get a very good idea of what it’s like to be old, to be bedridden. I hated the thought of it. They didn’t want me walking on my Achilles, because my leg was still in a cast and I was so weak. On the fifth day, I got tired of the bedpan. I got out of bed, grabbed my crutches and headed to the bathroom. Then I discovered they had me hooked up with an IV to this thing that had a bag of medicine. The thing was on wheels. It took me forever, but I used the crutches and made it to the bathroom, dragging the medicine thing behind me.

  Just as I sat down on the toilet, the nurse rushed in and yelled, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Leave me alone.”

  It felt so good just to be in the bathroom, alone. I wanted to enjoy the little bit of freedom for as long as I could. Then I was determined to haul myself back to bed, and I felt very proud of myself for making it. I never thought that walking to and from the bathroom would be such a big deal, but it was my major accomplishment that week. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about where the blood clots originated, or trying to blame anyone for what happened. Sometimes after surgery, there are blood clots: It’s a risk. But I did spend a lot of time considering how I was feeling great and coaching in the Olympics only a few weeks before, and now I was in a hospital bed. It gave me a reminder of how thankful I am to have spent so much time in sports, to not only be physically fit, but mentally fit. The doctors said that was part of the reason I was able to recover, that I was in good shape physically and emotionally. My faith also had a lot to do with that. Because I believe in God, I’m generally an optimistic person. I believe He has a plan for me. I believe that some things are out of my control, but all things are in His control. My belief in God kept me from panicking in the hospital. I trusted Him to pull me through, or to do with me what He wanted. I’m not saying I was smiling every minute; there were times when I was in that bed, staring at the ceiling, and thinking, “This is a lousy way to come home from the Olympics.” I’d think about the blood clots, wondering if they were breaking down as the doctors hoped. It’s not like a bruise or a wound you can look at and see the healing: It’s happening inside you, and you really have no idea what’s going on. But my faith kept me out of any real depression, and I believe it also helped my healing.

  I spent eight days in the hospital, and by the time I was released, it was nearly the opening of training camp with the Cavaliers. I was completely exhausted and drawn out. I had gone from the Eastern Conference Finals with the Cavs to the Olympics, to the Achilles surgery, to the hospital for the blood clots. Then I was told to stay home for a week and not do anything. No airplane trips. No leaving the house. Nothing. Just rest.

  Before I was released from the hospital, they cut off the hard cast and then put my Achilles in a portable cast. Then they said I had to leave the hospital in a wheelchair.

  I said, “Let me use the crutches and walk out.”

  They said, “Use the chair, or you don’t go home.”

  I used the chair. When I got to the car and tried to get out of the chair and into the seat, I realized how weak I was. It turned out that I’d lost fifteen pounds in the hospital. When I got home, my appetite returned. My spirits rose. And from that day, I’ve never taken simple things for granted, things like walking or a good night’s sleep. And I came away from that experience feeling even closer to my family and to God.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I DIDN’T WANT TO TELL ANYONE how tired I was, how rotten I felt, how drained I was after the summer of 1992. I didn’t open up to anyone except Marilyn about how it felt to be so close to death, or what those blood clots in my lungs did to me. Cavs trainer Gary Briggs may have been the only one who had an idea of what I was going through as I tried to recover while also rehabilitating my torn Achilles tendon. There were days when he’d ask me how I was doing in the kind of voice that said he knew I was in bad shape.

  But I was determined to press on.

  Now, I see that wasn’t real smart. If I had to do it over again, I probably wouldn’t have coached during the 1992-93 season. But at the time, I had no idea how long it would take for my body to recover from the clots and the surgery. I didn’t understand the mental strain of sitting in a hospital bed, day after day, not knowing if those blood clots would choke off my lungs. I thought I could just shake it off, will my way through it. I knew that God had a plan for me, that He was there with me. But I was still scared, and I’ll never forget the night I lay in that hospital bed, watching the hands of the clock slowly move for twenty-four straight hours.

  When NBA training camp begins, it opens with a vengeance. The coaches work twelve-to fourteen-hour days because there are morning and early evening practice sessions. In between, the coaches meet, study practice films, plan out the next practice. After the morning practice, all I wanted to do was go home and sleep. After the evening practice, all I did was go home and sleep. Sometimes, I was so exhausted, I’d lie down in the dressing room. I was coaching out of a golf cart because I was still on crutches. I didn’t want to admit what had happened to me. All I knew was that the Cavs had won 57 games and gone to the 1992 Eastern Conference Finals, and we were obsessed with trying to get past Michael Jordan and win an NBA title.

  This would be the most demanding season of my coaching career because of my health problems and the rising expectations surrounding the team. As time passed, I moved from crutches and the golf cart to a walking boot. But anyone who has ever had Achilles tendon surgery will tell you that it takes a full year for the leg to heal. I’d coach the team in practice, then do rehab on my Achilles afterward. That sapped all my energy. So did the travel, the games, the practices—everything involved in the NBA, which is a seven-day-a-week lifestyle. I don’t think I realized how much rest I’d need to recuperate from the combination of the surgery and the blood clots. And when I did feel the fatigue coming on, I fought it; I refused to admit that I wasn’t my old self. I didn’t want to give in to the fact that my body wasn’t allowing me to coach with the same energy.

  We still won 54 games that season, third-best in the history of the franchise—behind the 57 game
s we won in 1988-89 and 1991-92. So we still had a good year, but we weren’t quite as sharp as the season before. I was under a lot of stress because I felt we just weren’t at the top of our game, both the team and myself. When I’m not feeling well, I tend to withdraw a bit, so some of the people around me may not have understood all that I was going through.

  In the playoffs, we won a tough five-game series with New Jersey. The Nets had some injuries, but Derrick Coleman decided to play, and when he sets his mind to it, Coleman is a great player. He carried the Nets to that fifth game, before we prevailed. Then we faced the Bulls in the second round and were swept in four games. A couple of those games were very tight, but we still lost.

  When the season ended, I was totally, completely, and utterly exhausted. Meanwhile, there were newspaper stories appearing that the players may have stopped listening to me, that maybe they needed a change. On the day we played Game Four of the Chicago series, there was a story in the Akron Beacon Journal that this could be my final game as coach of the Cavs, and the next season, don’t be surprised if I was coaching the Atlanta Hawks or some other NBA team. This was news to me. But it turned out during the playoffs that the Hawks had asked permission from the Cavs to talk to me after our season was over. I still had a year left on my contract, and I wasn’t even aware the Hawks were interested in me.

  There was a lot of frustration, a lot of soul-searching after we were swept by the Bulls. Down deep, all of us knew the problem: They had Michael Jordan, and we didn’t. This was the fourth time in my seven years with the Cavs that we had been eliminated by Jordan’s Bulls in the playoffs. You can look back now and know that Jordan was the greatest ever to play the game, a player who won titles in six of his last seven seasons. But when you’re in the middle of it, when you’re trying to beat him, and when he breaks your heart over and over and over—it’s hard to accept, especially if you’re a competitor.

  I remember telling one reporter, “If they want to blame someone [for us losing to the Bulls], fine, blame me. I’m the coach. In the end, the responsibility is mine.”

  And that’s true, the coach is responsible for the bottom line. But I also know that the average guy having my health problems would have sat out at least half the season, just collected the paycheck. Was I at my best during that year? Of course not. I just didn’t have the energy. But is that why we lost to the Bulls? No way. I was hearing from a couple of other reporters that the front office was disenchanted with me, that they were wondering if the players had tuned me out, if I was losing my drive to win.

  I told one reporter, “Someone had to be listening for us to win 54 games.”

  When the playoffs ended, I was worn down, beat up, and hurt by the whispering about me. I started to think, “I’m a loyal guy. I take a job and I see it through. I’m trying to help this team, and they don’t appreciate it. I about died last summer, I came back too soon, I gave them all I had…”

  You know the thoughts that go through your head when you know you did the best job you could under trying circumstances, but your bosses don’t understand what you had to endure.

  “Why should I care about these people?” I asked myself. “I know there are other teams that would love to have me as coach, so why stay here?”

  That was the first time it ever crossed my mind to leave the Cavs—a few days after the 1993 playoffs. We were supposed to have a postseason meeting to evaluate the players and what we needed to do for next year. I called the front office and said, “I’m not coming in. I need to take some time off.”

  I’m not sure they understood, but I didn’t care. I was exhausted from the season, concerned about the rumors that the front office was unhappy with me. The last thing I needed to do was to sit down and do a verbal autopsy of the season. Mentally, I couldn’t handle it. Marilyn and I went to Rhode Island to visit some friends, Ralph and Vi Pari. I had lived with them part of the time I was in college, and they became a second family to me. Ralph is a person to whom I’ve always turned for advice, so I told him of my concern about the Cavs, how I felt that they were taking me for granted after seven years. Ralph said, “You make your decision. If you want to leave, leave. Life’s not worth it.”

  I hadn’t decided anything that weekend. I did have a year left on my contract. I heard that other teams had asked the Cavs for permission to talk to me, because there were rumors that I wouldn’t be back as Cleveland’s coach.

  It wasn’t until we came back to Cleveland that I told Marilyn, “I’m going to resign.”

  She asked why, and I told her that I wasn’t healthy last season, and the front office didn’t seem to care. I told her that I didn’t like some of the comments—or no-comments—made about me and my situation to the reporters. I just felt it was time to move on.

  I called Wayne Embry to inform him, but Wayne was out of town. So I decided just to get it over with, and I called Gordon Gund.

  “Gordon, I think it’s best I resign,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. I don’t know if he was faking it, but Gordon sounded genuinely surprised.

  “You guys are probably right,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “The players probably need to hear a new voice,” I said, referring to the rumors that I’d heard.

  “Are you sure we can’t work this out?” he asked.

  “Gordon,” I said, “I respect you, but I want out. It will be best for you, for the team, for me, for everybody.”

  We talked a while longer, then Gordon said that was fine. A press release was drawn up, and my time with the Cavs was over.

  In announcing my resignation, I told the press that it was a good idea for the players to hear a new voice, that coaching seven years in one place is a long time. I thought it was best to follow the party line, and I expressed no regrets about my years in Cleveland. But one question has always nagged at me: Would we have won a title if we’d kept Ron Harper?

  Craig Ehlo was a wonderful player for me. I took him with me when I went to Atlanta, and Ehlo played more games for me than any other player. But Craig Ehlo is a role player, best coming off the bench. Nothing was going to change that, but he was my starting shooting guard. We signed other shooting guards—John Battle and Gerald Wilkins—but they obviously weren’t the kind of talents needed to challenge Jordan. Ron Harper knew the game, he was capable of scoring 20 points, and he’d get some rebounds and steals; he demanded that Jordan defend him, or he’d put up some very big numbers. A key in trying to neutralize a player such as Jordan is to make him use some energy on defense. You need a player who can score on him, or he’ll rest on defense and destroy you on offense. Ehlo averaged 11 points for me in his four years as a starter in Cleveland, mostly on long-range jumpers. He wasn’t a player who ran around picks and made his man work on defense: That’s not a knock on Ehlo, just a realistic view of his game.

  Maybe no one was capable of beating Jordan, but I would have loved to have tried it with that original Cavs group of Price, Harper, Williams, Daugherty, and Nance with Ehlo as my sixth man.

  But Harper remained a sensitive topic with the front office and Cavs fans, and I didn’t want to bring that up again. So I just said, “The team needs a new voice.”

  Yes, there are times when that’s true, when things get stale. But I don’t think that was the case with the Cavs and me. I had an off year, just as a player can. I had a year where I battled injuries and illness, just like a player. But the front office rarely understands that a coach can go through the same things as a player. A smart front office will say, “Our coach wasn’t himself, but he had some tough things to deal with. Let’s tell him that we believe in him, and see what we can do to help him.”

  The Utah Jazz did that a number of years ago when there were rumors that the players had tuned out Jerry Sloan. In 1993 and 1995, the Jazz were knocked out of the playoffs in the first round. But the Jazz stuck with Sloan, who had been the head coach for seven years. In 1996, he took Utah to the Weste
rn Conference Finals; in 1997 and 1998, they went to the NBA Finals.

  It’s always easier to fire the coach after a disappointing year. Seldom is a front office criticized for that. It looks as if they are doing something, which most fans and writers think is a better idea than saying, “This coach is our guy, and we’re sticking with him.”

  After I resigned, Marilyn was nervous. I had walked out on the last year of a contract worth $650,000. I don’t know if the Cavs would have fired me, but if I had waited and they did, then I would have been paid that money.

  By resigning, I forfeited that money. But I wasn’t fired, I wasn’t forced out. I made the decision to leave on my own, and that still meant I needed a coaching job.

  In the summer of 1993, there were twenty-seven NBA teams, meaning there were only twenty-seven of these head coaching positions in the world. I had just walked away from one, so there were only twenty-six left. It’s hard to become an NBA coach, because there are so few openings each year, and I know that was running through Marilyn’s mind. Not that she had any doubt about my ability: Marilyn will tell you that I’m the greatest coach in NBA history. You don’t even need to ask. She is my wife, my best friend, my biggest fan. Some people thought I had a job lined up when I resigned from the Cavs, but that wasn’t the case. I was just confident that I could find another job, a fresh start, and that it would work out.

  My agent, Lonnie Cooper, was in contact with several teams. In the summer of 1991, the Knicks were interested in talking to me. I was still under contract to the Cavs, but I suppose I could have pushed for them to allow me to interview. Even though I’m from Brooklyn and the Knicks were intriguing, my wife and I just didn’t want to live in New York. We don’t like life at that fast a pace, even though the money would have been incredible. My family is important to me. We go hand-in-hand. It’s not just me who has to be happy where I work, they have to be comfortable, too. And by the summer of 1993, Pat Riley was in place as the Knicks coach, so New York was out.