Unguarded

by Lenny Wilkens

  Then came The Tour, which shouldn’t have been a big deal, either.

  At the end of the 1966-67 season, the U.S. State Department was putting together a group of NBA athletes to play and tour in South America. My coach, Richie Guerin, was in charge of the team and he picked the players. I just assumed I’d be invited. Not only was Richie my coach, we had played together in the same backcourt for three years. But Richie invited forward Bill Bridges and backup big man Gene Tormohlen. I admit, my feelings were hurt. I had seniority, and I was a better player than either of them. I had been an officer in the Army; this was a government-sponsored tour, and I wanted to go—or at least, I wanted to be told why someone else was invited over me. But I didn’t find out what had happened until after the players were picked for The Tour.

  And even that was awkward, because Bridges told me, “I’m not supposed to say anything, but Tormohlen and I are going to South America.”

  Why wasn’t he supposed to say anything?

  “Richie told me not to,” he said.

  Of course, Bridges did say something. That’s invariably what happens when you tell someone, “Don’t tell So-And-So about this.” The first thing they do is tell So-And-So.

  I knew Bridges was one of Guerin’s pet players. Richie was a knowledgeable coach, but he clearly played favorites. He liked Bridges. He liked Tormohlen, who was a role player at this stage of his career. He liked me as his point guard, but obviously I wasn’t one of his friends.

  So, his friends went… and I stayed home.

  And Guerin never did tell me why the decision was made. He could have called me in and said he was taking Bridges and Tormohlen. I wouldn’t have been happy about it, but I’d have accepted it; it was his team, his decision. But it seemed as if he was sneaking behind my back, as if everyone knew some secret except me. Even the wives of Bridges and Tormohlen were told not to say anything. The issue was like a pot left on the stove all day with a little flame on the burner; after a while, it simmers. Then it boils over.

  When training camp opened the next season, Bridges showed up completely out of shape. He was dragging up and down the court, messing around, and not approaching practice seriously. I was a veteran, the team captain, and the point guard—and I told him to bear down.

  “Well, you’re not passing the ball to me,” he said.

  “If I wasn’t a team player, you’d never get the ball from me,” I said. “So pipe down and do your job.”

  He got upset, but he didn’t say anything else. Then the whispers started, claiming that I’d yelled at Bridges because I was jealous of him, angry that he went on The Tour and I’d stayed home.

  I didn’t ask Guerin about The Tour because I knew he’d picked his friends. That was obvious. It also was clear to me that as team captain, I should have been invited. A captain is an extension of the coach on the floor, or he should be. I took the role very seriously, so I wasn’t afraid to tell my teammates things they needed to hear. That was why I said something to Bridges, not any silly reason like an off-season junket.

  That’s when Hawks owner Ben Kerner called me in.

  “What’s on your mind?” he asked.

  “Nothing is on my mind,” I said.

  “If it’s about The Tour, I’ll send you on a tour next year,” he said.

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “It was how it was handled. I’m not hung up on this thing, but you people ought to be more careful how you make decisions. I’ll do the best job I can for you, but I just wanted you to know the whole thing was handled badly.”

  Kerner didn’t say much else.

  As training camp continued, we went into a losing streak, about five games in a row. But this was training camp! These were exhibition games, but people were panicking. Then Bridges told me that I was putting a strain on his relationship with Guerin. In essence, he said he couldn’t be friends with me and the coach.

  Doesn’t this sound stupid?

  Well, it was. But it’s also what happens when things are allowed to fester, when everyone would rather talk behind each other’s back than bring it out into the open. And it continued when Guerin called me in and said, “You’re not going to be team captain any more.”

  I asked why.

  “Because you’re jealous of Bridges,” he said.

  “I’m not jealous of Bridges,” I said. “The only reason I said something to him was because he was out of shape and not working hard.”

  “No, it was because of The Tour,” he said.

  The Tour was getting to be like something in your eye. What do you do when that happens? You rub it. And what happens then? It gets worse, and it seems as if it will never go away.

  No one thought I was jealous of Bridges—until The Tour. No one thought I was unfit to be captain—until The Tour. No one thought I was unhappy—until The Tour.

  Then it got worse.

  Guerin had decided not to play that season, to be a full-time coach. He had Joe Caldwell set to take his spot in the backcourt with me.

  “I think you’re jealous of Joe,” he said. “I heard a story that you supposedly were afraid Joe would make the All-Star team.”

  The implication was I worried Caldwell would be an All-Star instead of me, that I felt threatened by Caldwell’s talent.

  “Listen, if Joe makes the team, I’ll be the happiest guy in the world,” I said. “I’m the point guard. My job is to get the best out of everyone on the team.”

  Guerin and I left the room not thrilled with each other. I was no longer captain. He thought I was so insecure that I wasn’t going to pass the ball to Caldwell? The more I thought about it, the more it hurt. Rubbing an eye for too long can lead to an infection, right?

  Now, I can see it was ridiculous.

  Back then, I believed my reputation was at stake, so I called a team meeting. I told the players what Richie had said about me being envious of Caldwell.

  “Richie said someone on the team told him that,” I said. “I want to know who it was, so we can have it out. Stand up right now, so I can call you a liar to your face.”

  Of course, no one did.

  “The only way I know how to play is to make sure everyone gets the ball,” I said. “I want Joe Caldwell to make the All-Star team. I want everyone to be a star. That means we’ll have a great team.”

  A few weeks later, Guerin told me that I was captain again, which was after we had just won four exhibition games.

  I just nodded.

  We had a truce. It was shaky and delicate, but it was a truce.

  We opened the regular season on the West Coast and won three games. While we were gone, the wives had a get-together at the Guerins’ house. You have to understand that things are often a bit touchy between the wives of players. Little slights become gaping wounds. Suspicions surface, grudges become entrenched.

  And sure enough, at the little party, The Tour came up. Tempers flared. Charges were made, fingers pointed. Just when the subject was dying down in the dressing room, it became a roaring fire in the homes of the players. At the next game, some of the wives discovered their seats had been changed. This can be a real minefield. Most wives sit in the same section, so they can sit together if they wish—or put a few rows between them to keep the peace, but they still sit in the same area. For this game, Zelmo Beaty’s wife, Paul Silas’s wife, and my wife found themselves sitting in three different corners of the arena. They weren’t near each other, or any of the other wives. The wives of Guerin, Bridges, Tormohlen, and the rest sat together, as they always had.

  The Tour wouldn’t go away.

  Bridges and Tormohlen went on The Tour, and their wives sat together in their regular seats. Everybody noticed the three women who had been scattered to the far corners of the arena. Zelmo Beaty was our center, a six-foot-nine, 240-pound man who could take Richie Guerin and squeeze him into a box of cornflakes, which was about what Beaty wanted to do. You can insult a player, but don’t hurt the feelings of his wife. I told Beaty that I’d talk to
Richie about the tickets. The amazing thing is that we still started the season at 4-0, with all this bickering and back-biting happening behind the scene.

  I told Guerin, “We’ve got a problem with the wives’ tickets. I know some of the wives are unhappy, but you can’t go spreading them all over the building. You can have your wife sit somewhere else, but a lot of the other wives want to sit together.”

  “I was just looking out for the best interests of the club,” he said, indicating that he thought the wives sitting and talking with one another during games just made emotions run higher. He thought separating them would cool things down.

  “But you made a bad situation worse,” I said.

  Wives are very sensitive to status. Some are hung up on clothes, wanting to dress as well as the wives of the stars. Others are angry because their husband doesn’t make as much money as the husband of a teammate, when they just know their husband is the better player. And most wives aren’t thrilled with the coach, because they want their husband to play more, shoot more, get more of the best things.

  Under the best circumstances, a few wives always feel left out or angry about something. But this ticket mess was turning that speck in the eye into a cancer on the team. The Band-Aid they tried to put on it was to have the wives of Paul Silas, Zelmo Beaty, and myself sit together—because they were friends. At this point, nothing could repair the damage.

  Through all this, somehow, we kept winning. We had run our record up to 16-1 when Guerin decided to call me in for a meeting. He showed me some shot charts, which keep track of which players shoot the ball and from where on the court.

  “Our forwards aren’t getting enough shots,” he said.

  The implication was that the guards—specifically, myself—were shooting too much.

  “Richie, we’re 16-1, we must be doing something right,” I said.

  The numbers showed that Zelmo Beaty and I were each averaging about 23 points. Joe Caldwell was scoring 21 a game. Our forwards were Paul Silas and Bridges, both of whom were known more for their rebounding and defense. Neither was a strong outside shooter. It made no sense for them to shoot the ball more, especially with us winning.

  Then it dawned on me: The Tour. Bridges. He thought I still didn’t like Bridges because of The Tour and the flare-up in training camp, so that’s why he didn’t get more shots. It was my fault, I wouldn’t give him the ball. Bridges was shooting maybe six times a game. I don’t believe Bridges complained to Guerin, but Guerin was just suspicious of me.

  “If a guy plays forty minutes a night, he should shoot more than that,” he said.

  “Richie, our team has changed over the years,” I said. “We run the ball more than when we had Cliff Hagan and Bob Pettit. Silas and Bridges get the ball off the boards, throw it out, and start our fast break. We’re 16-1. It’s your job to tell Bridges what he’s doing and why we’re winning.”

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job,” he screamed.

  “Fine,” I said. “We’ll get him the ball more.”

  I said that just to get out of there, to bring an end to another conversation that never should have happened in the first place.

  At this point, we were winning but not drawing very well. For the first time in the history of St. Louis basketball, we were consistently starting five black players—Bridges, Beaty, Silas, Caldwell, and myself. No one ever said anything, but suddenly we traded for Don Ohl, a good white guard who was at the end of his career. I mention his race only because I believe that was the reason the deal was made—to get a white player in the lineup. The thinking was that maybe more white fans would come out if there were white players on the court for the home team. No one said it, but I sensed it. Ohl moved into the lineup, and Caldwell went to the bench. Caldwell was scoring 20 points a game, so he couldn’t figure out what he’d done wrong. At this point in their careers, Caldwell was the better player, yet Ohl was starting. And Ohl was white.

  And suddenly, the race issue was tossed into the simmering pot and threatened to blow the lid right off the team.

  Then there was another problem with the wives.

  Because the crowds were small in St. Louis, some of the wives would invite friends who were originally sitting in other parts of the arena to come and sit with them. Who cared? The seats were empty, anyway, and the people had bought tickets to get into the building. Well, the ushers began checking tickets, telling the friends they couldn’t sit with my wife and some of the other wives. They even checked the tickets of our wives, although they knew the women were the wives of the players. It only happened to some of the wives, not all. Naturally, my wife and a few others thought they had been singled out for this petty harassment by the front office, and we husbands weren’t happy about it, either.

  There had been yet another stupid incident in the previous season. Guerin called the team together and talked about the Rookie of the Year race, which was between Lou Hudson, who played for us, and Dave Bing of the Detroit Pistons. Back then, the players voted on the award, but you couldn’t vote for anyone on your team. Guerin said that we could help Hudson to win the award by voting for anyone except Dave Bing. I realize that’s part of how politics works, but it bothered me. I had nothing against Lou Hudson; I liked Lou Hudson. But I also thought a vote said something about you as a person, about your integrity.

  I stood up and said, “I don’t think that’s right.”

  Guerin stared hard at me.

  “You should vote your conscience,” I said. “We should vote for the rookie we think is the best.”

  No one said anything, but I could tell that Guerin was steaming. He took it as an insult, that I was questioning his authority. To me, it had nothing to do with Guerin; I don’t care who suggested it, I thought it was wrong. And as team captain, I felt obligated to say so. But I’m sure Guerin took this as another example of me being a troublemaker.

  We should have had a tremendous team in 1967-68. We won fifty-six games, best in the Western Conference. But we were upset by the San Francisco (now Golden State) Warriors in the first round. We lost our cohesiveness as a team, and after the playoffs I was mentioned as the scapegoat despite averaging 20 points and 8.3 assists. Strangely, for a supposedly selfish player, I had a career high in assists; only Wilt Chamberlain had more that season. I finished second to Wilt in the MVP voting.

  Despite all the problems, the Hawks did have a Lenny Wilkens Night for me, partly due to pressure in the black community. It had been a tradition to give a night to a player who had been with the team for a while. All the previous nights had been for white players. They gave me a color TV set, golf clubs, luggage, a silver tea set for my wife, a portrait of me by Cardinals outfielder and artist Curt Flood. Kerner even gave me a green Cadillac, and the Hawks said that I was a great guy, a real asset to the franchise and the community.

  “Wilkens is among the top four guards in the league,” Kerner told reporters. “I’ve got to believe that Lenny is the best backcourt man I’ve ever had (with the Hawks). He’s got a million dollars worth of class.”

  In the end, all of that wasn’t worth two cents.

  I had made $35,000 that year, which was well below the market value of a player of my caliber. It was now the summer of 1968, and the American Basketball Association had come into existence, competing with the NBA and causing salaries to rise. An All-Star guard with Philadelphia, Hal Greer, had just signed for $60,000. The great Oscar Robertson had a new $80,000 contract, as did Jerry West. I thought I should get paid somewhere between those guys. At the very least, I wanted a raise to Greer’s level of $60,000.

  I met with Marty Blake, the Hawks general manager. Actually, I listened, and Blake yammered away.

  “Do you believe these salaries?” he asked, not waiting for an answer. “Guys want $75,000… $80,000. If that’s what you’re looking for, then there’s nothing for us to talk about. But $75,000?”

  “That sounds like a nice number to me,” I said.

  “If you feel that way
, then we have nothing to talk about,” Blake said.

  I didn’t go into the meeting with the intention of building a wall between myself and the Hawks, but it was obvious that Blake had no real intention of negotiating with me. He didn’t treat me with respect. He just wanted to complain about the high salaries, kind of a strange way to convince me that I wasn’t worth whatever I was asking—although he had no idea how much I had in mind.

  I realized it was futile for me to talk to the Hawks, or at least to Blake. The Hawks came back and tried to sign me to a $45,000 deal with a $2,500 bonus. Then they said they wanted to trade me to Boston. I liked the idea of playing for the Celtics, but I knew that $45,000 was much less than I was worth. I also didn’t trust them to make the deal. I asked to talk to Celtics president Red Auerbach, figuring I could work out a contract with him—and help the deal go through. That’s common today when a name player is about to be traded near the end of his contract—the player’s agent talks to the team trying to make the trade, and they come to a contract agreement. Then the deal is announced. But that rarely—if ever—happened in 1968.

  The Hawks refused to let me speak to Auerbach. I refused to sign their contract. The trade collapsed. I sat home in St. Louis.

  Then the team was sold to a group in Atlanta. As the team prepared to play the next season in a new city, Atlanta decided to host a booster club meeting and a media gathering to introduce the players to the fans and writers. Every Hawks player was invited to attend—except me. That decision was made by the Hawks management. I wasn’t signed, but I was still part of the team and they should have invited me. I guess they didn’t want me there because I was still unsigned, and they figured that eventually they’d trade me. This was in the era when there was virtually no free agency; a player’s contract would expire, but his rights still belonged to the original team. The only leverage a player had to try to secure a better contract was to hold out during training camp, which I did. They began to fine me $100, then $150, for each day of training camp I missed. Of course, I wasn’t signed, and I wasn’t being paid by them, so how could they take my money?