“Embodies the best of the NBA”
Mourning for Lenny Wilkens: Basketball legend is dead
Updated 11/10/2025 – 9:41 amReading time: 2 minutes
Whether as a player, as a coach or as an assistant: Lenny Wilkens was a key figure in US basketball. The sadness following his death is therefore particularly great.
Lenny Wilkens shaped basketball like no other. He was exceptional both on the field and on the sidelines. Now the former player and coach has died at the age of 88. This is reported by the AP news agency, citing the American’s family.
Wilkens played 2,487 games as a coach in the NBA. No other coach in the history of the league has completed more. He is a three-time Hall of Fame inductee: as a player, as a coach and as an assistant on the 1992 U.S. Olympic team.
NBA CEO Adam Silver said: “Lenny Wilkens embodied the best of the NBA – as a Hall of Fame player, Hall of Fame coach and one of the sport’s most respected ambassadors.”
Wilkens was the first coach to reach the 1,000-win mark. His active playing career lasted from 1960 to 1975, after which he worked as a coach until 2005, at times as a player-coach. Wilkens took part in the All-Star Game nine times as a player and four times as a coach.
In 1979 he won the NBA championship with the Seattle SuperSonics. Wilkens also celebrated great success on the international stage: in 1992 he won Olympic gold as an assistant with the so-called USA dream team, and in 1996 he led the team to gold again as head coach.
“Even more impressive than Lenny’s basketball achievements, including two Olympic gold medals and an NBA championship, was his commitment to community service – particularly in his beloved city of Seattle, where a statue was erected in his honor,” Silver said. “He influenced the lives of countless young people as well as entire generations of players and coaches who valued Lenny not only as a great teammate or coach, but also as an exceptional mentor who led with integrity and true class.”