Lenny Wilkens

Leonard Randolph Wilkens (October 28, 1937 – November 9, 2025) was an American professional basketball player and coach in the National Basketball Association. Quotes I’ve always believed you need balance,mIt’s not that I don’t want a star — I’ll always take a star — but even if you have a star, it’s important to surround him with the right kind of complementary players. d is a legend, so this is a huge achievement,mWhen I started coaching, all of us looked at Red and thought his record was something that would stand forever. The satisfaction is that only one person can be No. 1 at the time. Only one guy can be at the top. It’s nice to be there, for however long. I got there, and no one can take that from me. We went around and around. I told him no at first. I finally decided, what the heck, I had nothing to lose; I’d try it and see if I liked it. Everyone always said I was like a coach on the floor, anyway. I began to realize that I had to do a lot more to coach successfully, After a while, we had started to do more things within the league, with trapping and double-teaming, becoming more sophisticated. And we were finding that young players were coming in and they didn’t really know the game. So that required a lot of teaching, and helping them to understand situations, and I began to realize after awhile that I couldn’t do both. I still remember when I took over that team, I had heard general managers and other people say it was the worst team ever. And when I turned them around, all of a sudden everyone said, ‘Well, we all knew they had the talent. Legends profile: Lenny Wilkens, September 13 2021 External links Category:1937 births Category:Basketball players from the United States Category:Basketball coaches from the United States Category:People from New York City Category:African Americans Category:Living people