Lenny Wilkens & Cal Raleigh

This writer has spent his life pretty much in Providence, Rhode Island and Seattle, Washington. It’s hard to find someone who could be called a legend in both cities, but there was one. Leonard Randolph Wilkens who died last week, made his mark in cities roughly 3,000 miles apart.

Lenny Wilkens, who grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of New York city, put Providence College on the map when he led the Friars to their first NIT championship (when a lot fewer teams made the NCAA’s) in 1960, after leading the Friars to their first-ever NIT appearance the previous year.

A second-team All-American, the Boston Celtics could have claimed Wilkens as a territorial draft pick before the draft (they took Tom Sanders from NYU in the regular draft) after Wilkens went to the St. Louis Hawks, two picks earlier. He was the first player to have his number (14) retired at Providence and the Sonics would later retire his number (19).

Seattle sports fans know that Wilkens coached the Seattle SuperSonics (just the Sonics to us) to their only NBA championship in 1979. He also had a street named after him near the Climate Pledge Arena. How many people can say that.

Overall, Wilkens had a more impressive career than many current fans might realize. For starters, he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame THREE different times, first in 1989 as a player, as a coach in 1998, and in 2010 as part of the Olympic winning `Dream Team’ of 1992, where he served as an assistant coach. He’s also in the College Basketball Hall of Fame and the only person to be named twice to the NBA 50^th Anniversary Team as both a player and a coach.

Wilkens made a combined 13 appearances in the NBA All-Star game, nine as a player, four as a coach. He also coached the Olympic gold-medal winning 1996 U.S. men’s basketball team. He finished his NBA career with 17,772 points and was ranked as one of the 75 best players in NBA history by The Athletic.

He coached six different NBA teams, including the Sonics twice, and was a player-coach his first time in Seattle, 1969-72. He was also player-coach one season with the Portland Trailblazers, before returning to Seattle and winning his only NBA title. Wilkens was also voted one of the 15 best coaches in NBA history.

Wilkens has 1,332 coaching victories placing him third behind Greg Popovich and Don Nelson. Wilken’s also the most prolific NBA coach. He coached 2,487 games- 49 more than Nelson, and 400 more than any other NBA coach,

While coaching and playing point guard showed his leadership abilities, some remembrances of Wilkens mentioned that he was an unofficial advisor to the NBA commissioner.

When Wilkens died on Nov. 9, NBA commissioner Adam Silver released a statement that included these words ``He influenced the lives of countless young people as well as generations of players and coaches who considered Lenny not only a great teammate or coach but also an extraordinary mentor who led with integrity and true class.’’

Sports fans in Providence and Seattle will always remember Lenny Wilkens.

RALEIGH FINISHES SECOND

Cal Raleigh did not win the American League Most Valuable Player Award last week, although he’s still number one in the hearts of Seattle Mariner fans.

By now, everyone knows that the Mariner catcher finished second in the voting to New York Yankee and two-time winner Aaron Judge. For the record, 30 sportswriters voted for the award.  Judge received 17 first place votes and 13 seconds, Raleigh received the opposite, 13 first and 17 seconds.

Voters select ten finalists, ranking them 1-10. First-place votes are 14 points, and second-place are nine votes. Judge finished with 355 points; Raleigh, 325. Assuming that both Seattle-based writers voted Raleigh first (and we don’t even know who they were), a strategic ploy might be to leave Judge entirely off the ballot. But since Judge had 13 second-place votes that would only take 18 points off his total, he would still beat Raleigh by two points.

We predicted that Raleigh would win because he had more homers while Judge had a higher batting average. Modern voters seem to dig the long ball, although Judge did lead in some other categories that ESPN’s Michael Wilbon would say no one cares about.

The pitching equivalent of that philosophy is that Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes won the National League Cy Young Award despite a 12-11 record. In the good old days, the Cy Young more often than not went to the pitcher with the most wins, not an ERA leader like Skenes. For the record, Milwaukee’s Freddy Peralta was the winningest pitcher in baseball this past season (18 wins) and wasn’t even among the three finalists for the NL Cy Young.

While winning is the most important stat, one can only guess how many wins Skenes- who lost five games when the Pirates were shutout- would have had with a heavy-hitting Brewers’ lineup behind him.