Unguarded (eBook)

My Forty Years Surviving in the NBA

Terry Pluto, Lenny Wilkens (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2001 | 1. Auflage
304 Seiten
Simon & Schuster (Verlag)
978-0-7432-1513-8 (ISBN)

Infos

For forty years, he has been the Quiet Man of the NBA. As a rookie, he was overshadowed by two pretty fair guards who entered the league
at the same time: Jerry West and Oscar Robertson. As a veteran, he was -- both figuratively and literally -- a coach on the floor, but he had the misfortune to play for several struggling teams. As a general manager, he won a championship and made back-to-back Finals appearances -- but he did it without superstars, a year before Magic Johnson and Larry Bird revitalized the league. And as a coach, he has won more games than anyone in NBA history -- but spent his best years locked in the same division as Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls.
Basketball connoisseurs have long appreciated the style and intelligence with which Lenny Wilkens played and the unflappability and class he's brought to coaching. The respect he has earned resulted in his joining the legendary John Wooden as the only men to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame twice -- first as a player, and then as a coach.
Now, in Unguarded, Lenny Wilkens steps out from behind his placid demeanor to speak plainly and unequivocally on the enormous social and athletic changes he's seen in his career.
Wilkens sounds off about the challenges he had to overcome in the course of his journey: the racism that left him off the 1960 Olympic basketball team and kept him from being chosen as head coach of the first Dream Team, the fatal miscalculation that kept his Cleveland Cavaliers from getting past Michael Jordan to the NBA Finals, the painful, frustrating task of coaching a troubled and troublesome J.R. Rider, a player who contributed to his departure from Atlanta. And he credits those who went out of their way to help him: the priests and nuns who taught him the value of discipline and reinforced his faith, the coaches who pushed him to develop his talents to the fullest, the selfless players such as John Johnson, Hot Rod Williams, Larry Nance, Steve Smith, and many others who sacrificed individual glory for the good of their teams, his mother, Henrietta, and his wife, Marilyn, who stood beside him in many trying times.
Unguarded reveals the Lenny Wilkens we have never seen before, the tough, strong, thoughtful, and analytical man who has spent a life in basketball making his teammates and players better than they knew they could be. Thought-provoking, candid, always honest, Wilkens shares all the secrets he's learned in his four decades surviving in the NBA storm.

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Unguarded reveals the Lenny Wilkens we have never seen before, the tough, strong, thoughtful, and analytical man who has spent a life in basketball making his teammates and players better than they knew they could be. Thought-provoking, candid, always honest, Wilkens shares all the secrets he's learned in his four decades surviving in the NBA storm.For forty years, he has been the Quiet Man of the NBA. As a rookie, he was overshadowed by two pretty fair guards who entered the league at the same time: Jerry West and Oscar Robertson. As a veteran, he wasboth figuratively and literallya coach on the floor, but he had the misfortune to play for several struggling teams. As a general manager, he won a championship and made back-to-back Finals appearancesbut he did it without superstars, a year before Magic Johnson and Larry Bird revitalized the league. And as a coach, he has won more games than anyone in NBA historybut spent his best years locked in the same division as Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls. Basketball connoisseurs have long appreciated the style and intelligence with which Lenny Wilkens played and the unflappability and class he's brought to coaching. The respect he has earned resulted in his joining the legendary John Wooden as the only men to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame twicefirst as a player, and then as a coach. Now, in Unguarded, Lenny Wilkens steps out from behind his placid demeanor to speak plainly and unequivocally on the enormous social and athletic changes he's seen in his career. Wilkens sounds off about the challenges he had to overcome in the course of his journey: the racism that left him off the 1960 Olympic basketball team and kept him from being chosen as head coach of the first Dream Team; the fatal miscalculation that kept his Cleveland Cavaliers from getting past Michael Jordan to the NBA Finals; the painful, frustrating task of coaching a troubled and troublesome J.R. Rider, a player who contributed to his departure from Atlanta. And he credits those who went out of their way to help him: the priests and nuns who taught him the value of discipline and reinforced his faith; the coaches who pushed him to develop his talents to the fullest; the selfless players such as John Johnson, Hot Rod Williams, Larry Nance, Steve Smith, and many others who sacrificed individual glory for the good of their teams; his mother, Henrietta, and his wife, Marilyn, who stood beside him in many trying times.

Textauszug

Chapter One On my desk, there's a picture of my father. He's a man I never really knew, yet a man who feels very much a part of me today. The man staring at me is always about thirty-five, always in the prime of life, dark-skinned, strong, healthy. He's the father I wished was there when my team in Seattle won the 1979 NBA title, the father I wanted with me when I was inducted in the Basketball Hall of Fame. When I puffed that cigar to celebrate breaking Red Auerbach's record for the most career victories by any NBA coach, I wanted my father there. He's the father I wished could see my children and meet my wife, Marilyn. He will always be my father, and he will always live in my head because he died when I was only five years old. His name was Leonard. I'm really Leonard R. Wilkens, Jr. Few people know that about me. Few people know very much about me, even though I've been in the public eye seemingly forever, as an NBA player and/or coach since 1960. That's a long time, forty years in pro basketball. No one has survived the NBA storm longer. No one has appeared in more games when you combine all the years that I've played and coached. And here am I, at the age of sixty-two. I've coached for twenty-seven years, and I still love it. I really do. I just wish that my father had been there for some of it. Seeing other kids with fathers made me miss my father. There would be functions at school, and other children would have both parents there. I'd have my mother, assuming she could get off from work. Sometimes, no one was there. Later, as I achieved some things, I wondered what my father would have made of it all: graduating from college. Playing in the NBA. Making All-Star teams. Coaching some wonderful teams, coaching in the 1996 Olympics. Sometimes I'd ask myself, 'What would my father have thought of me? Would he be proud of me?' There's no real answer to that because he's been gone for so long. After my father died, my mother spent a lot of time telling all her children how much our father loved us. She wanted us to know that our father didn't want to leave us, that he would have loved to have been with us, but God just called him. I never really understood why he was gone, but I knew it wasn't his fault. He didn't run off, he died. I missed him then, and I always will. Those who knew my father say that I'm a lot like him. They say if you look at my hands, you see his hands. That's what I've heard over and over again from those who knew my father -- that I have my father's hands, strong, with long, purposeful fingers. I look at my hands and try to imagine my father's hands, then I wonder if he was an athlete. I don't even know if he was a sports fan. Relatives have told me that sometimes I walk like him, or that I gesture like him. I don't know what to say to that, because the more I think about my father, the less I realize I know. I do have one memory of him: I'm sitting in a high chair at the dinner table. I'm not much more than an infant. My father takes a piece of bacon, ties it to a string from something above my head. That bacon attached to a string hangs down, dangling right in front of me. With my little hands, I bang around the bacon, and that keeps me occupied as my parents eat breakfast. That was my father, a man who knew how to make a toy for a toddler out of a piece of bacon and a string. And he baked. I don't remember seeing him bake, but I remember the smells. Fresh bread. Cakes. The warm aromas filling our brownstone apartment in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. I can close my eyes and see my sister and myself sitting on a bench. My father is in the kitchen. I don't see him in the...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.9.2001
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• Themenwelt: Sport ► Ballsport ► Basketball
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft
• ISBN-10: 0-7432-1513-3 / 0743215133
• ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-1513-8 / 9780743215138