Lenny Wilkens — a Brooklyn native enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach — died Sunday at 88.
The former Knicks coach starred as a player for 15 seasons after being drafted sixth overall out of Providence College in 1960.
He was a nine-time All-Star, making it with the St. Louis Hawks, Seattle SuperSonics and Cleveland Cavaliers.
He retired as a player following the 1974-75 season with Portland, but had already started coaching, serving as a player/coach in both Seattle and Portland before becoming a full-time coach in 1975-76.
Wilkens then returned to coach the Sonics and led the franchise to its first NBA title — and only one in Seattle — in 1979.
He also coached in Cleveland, Atlanta and Toronto before finishing up his career with his hometown Knicks, who he led for parts of two seasons from 2004-05.
Wilkens, who played at then-Boys High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, got the Knicks to the postseason in 2004 after replacing Don Chaney, but resigned following a rough start to the next season.
When he retired, Wilkens had 1,332 wins as a head coach, the most all-time. He’s now third on the list, having been passed by Don Nelson and Gregg Popovich. He is one of just five men to be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as both player and coach.
He also led the US team to a Gold Medal in the 1996 Olympics.
In a statement, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said Wilkens “represented the very best of the NBA — as a Hall of Fame player, Hall of Fame coach, and one of the game’s most respected ambassadors,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement Sunday. “So much so that, four years ago, Lenny received the unique distinction of being named one of the league’s 75 greatest players and 15 greatest coaches of all time.”
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