Unguarded

by Lenny Wilkens

  Anyway, the deal was done.

  I found I really enjoyed the trading part of it, and I also knew that we had to make several deals or our team wasn’t going anywhere.

  One day, Sam Schulman stopped me in the hallway and said, “You’ve been busy.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I brought you back here because you know where the players are that we need,” he said.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  I suppose Sam was a little surprised how I immediately began acting like the general manager. I had spent my entire adult life in the NBA as a player and a coach. I was confident in my background and my talent judgment, which came into play when the decision was made to draft Jack Sikma.

  Hopkins had scouted the college players, and he had also projected the draft to where it looked as if we’d have a choice between Ernie Grunfeld and Sikma. Hopkins liked both players, and so did I. Grunfeld was a forward at Tennessee; he played in the same front court as Bernard King, and they both scored a lot. He was every-body’s All-American and played in a high-profile program.

  Sikma was a lanky, six-foot-eleven center from little Illinois Wesleyan College, an NAIA school. I had seen a lot of Grunfeld, because Tennessee was often on TV. But little was known about Sikma, because his school was small and had virtually no media exposure. I watched Sikma in the NAIA national tournament in Kansas City, and I was intrigued. He had this strange, fall-away step-back move. He’d catch the ball, turn, and face the defender. As his man attempted to block his shot, Jack would take a step back. That created some space. Then he sort of hesitated before he shot the ball, almost as if he had a hitch in his shot. This destroyed the timing of the guy trying to block his shot, and it often led to him drawing fouls. I didn’t care that Sikma played at a tiny school mostly against players who were usually much shorter; I could see him being a very good player in the NBA. I was thrilled that Hopkins had found him and spoke so highly of a kid who, until that point, had been on only a few NBA teams’ radar screens.

  “You’re right,” I told Hopkins. “I really like Sikma.”

  “I don’t know,” said Hopkins. “Maybe we should go with Grunfeld.”

  I knew what was happening. Hopkins was worried about the public and media reaction to drafting a player whom no one had ever seen, at least no one in Seattle. Especially when a star like Grunfeld was available.

  “Bob, you did all the work on Sikma,” I said.” I’m just confirming what you originally saw.”

  “I know, but…” he said, his voice trailing off.

  The more Hopkins wavered, the more I was sold on Sikma. Not because Hopkins was backing off, but because I could see Sikma as a guy who’d score 15 to 20 points a night, especially because that strange hesitation shot would enable him to draw a lot of fouls, and he was very good at the free throw line. He also should get close to 10 rebounds a game.

  We needed a center, because we didn’t know if we’d be able to sign Webster at the end of the season. We had already traded Burleson, our starting center from the previous year.

  So on draft day, I stood up and announced that we were picking Jack Sikma. The reaction of most media and fans was summed up in this headline from one of our local newspapers: jack who?

  I could tell that Sam Schulman was concerned. He was trying to sell tickets. A player such as Grunfeld would have helped. In fact, I tried to work a deal with Milwaukee: The Bucks had three first-round picks, and I thought for a while that we could acquire one of them. Then we’d pick both Grunfeld and Sikma, but the Bucks changed their minds and kept the picks.

  So JACK WHO? was our marquee draft pick. To Schulman’s credit, he allowed me to make the choice. He didn’t meddle as some owners do, owners who are too worried about the opinions of the fans and reporters rather than trusting their basketball people to make the decisions that would be best for the team—even if they’re unpopular.

  We signed Sikma in August, and he played for our summer league team in Los Angeles. Jack had celebrated being our top pick and knowing that he had a big contract to come by playing golf most of the summer. So he was in lousy shape, and for his first summer pro game, he was matched up against Moses Malone.

  I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty.

  Moses just blistered Sikma. I think he had 39 points. He pounded Sikma on the boards. It was a nightmare.

  I was sitting between Hopkins and Schulman. Sam could be very emotional, and when Moses dunked over Sikma, Sam started screaming, “This is our first-round pick?!”

  “Lenny wanted him,” said Hopkins, before I could even say a word.

  I was a little surprised at how fast Hopkins had jumped off Sikma’s ship, especially since he was the one who put Sikma’s boat in the water to begin with by bringing Jack to my attention.

  Anyway, I sat there, gritted my teeth, and said, “That’s right, he’s our first-round pick. Sam, he’s going to be fine. This is just his first summer league game, for heaven’s sake. Give him time.”

  “OK,” barked Schulman, but I could tell that he had his doubts.

  Meanwhile, Hopkins sat there, saying nothing. I knew what he was thinking: “We should have drafted Grunfeld.” I also was beginning to realize that while Hopkins had decent basketball instincts, he was very insecure. He had never played in the NBA, nor had he been a head coach in the league. He had coached at Loyola of New Orleans, which wasn’t a big-time college program. He was a friend of Russell’s, and that’s why he was hired to be an assistant in Seattle. If I was going to mess up, I could tell that Hopkins wanted to put some distance between himself and my decisions.

  I admit, it was hard to watch Sikma play so poorly in the summer league, but I believed in him. I also knew that the combination of Webster and Sikma was a major upgrade at center over Burleson. I was sure Silas would help us, too. And I was positive that Fred Brown was a better player than Earl Tatum, so we were better there just by standing still.

  But I knew we had to do more.

  We needed another guard, and I considered Jimmy Cleamons, a free agent who had been a solid point man with Cleveland. But as I looked at the free agent list, I spotted Gus Williams’s name. This was in the age when you could sign a free agent, but then you had to work out some sort of compensation with the free agent’s old team. Williams had been an explosive scorer in the backcourt for Golden State. I loved his speed and enthusiasm, even if he sometimes took bad shots. Signing him cost us only a second-round draft choice, and we agreed to pick up about $200,000 in deferred money on Williams’s original contract with Golden State. That money would be paid several years after Williams retired, so it was of no immediate concern to us.

  We had holdovers Slick Watts, Dennis Johnson, Fred Brown, and now Williams in the backcourt.

  We had Webster and Sikma in the middle.

  We had Bruce Seals and Silas at forward. Webster also could play there. Hopkins wanted someone else and suggested Sidney Wicks. After what I’d endured with Wicks in Portland, there was no way I was going to bring him to Seattle. Instead, I worked a deal for John Johnson, who was with Houston. I had played with Johnson (called J.J.) in Cleveland. He was a strong-willed small forward who played so hard every night that you’d swear he absolutely hated the man he was going against. He also was a very good passer. Our backcourt was loaded with scorers, guys who were going to take a lot of shots, so I knew I’d better find a forward who liked to pass, and J.J. was available for two second-round draft picks. It was an easy decision.

  As the season began, I didn’t think we were a championship-caliber team, but I thought we’d be much better than people expected. I was eager to sit back and watch all the pieces come together.

  Instead, the team fell apart.

  In some respects, that wasn’t a shock. We had a lot of new players, and they needed time to mesh. But Hopkins was taking each loss as if it were the end of the world. Every few days he was going to see Zollie Volchok, complaining about the players we had and wanting to trade for someo
ne else. First of all, Zollie was in charge of the business side, not basketball, so Hopkins knew he was talking to the wrong guy: He should have come to me, but he didn’t. Maybe he thought I was after his job. What Hopkins didn’t know was that Schulman wanted to fire him about six games into the season. A week later, Sam again wanted to fire Hopkins.

  “Sam, give him some time,” I said. “It’s early.”

  What I didn’t tell Sam was that I saw Hopkins making a very critical mistake: He was continually ripping his own players in the newspapers. I mean, he was killing the guys. The reporters loved it because it made their jobs easy, so they were writing that Hopkins had no chance to win with the talent he was given. Meanwhile, the players kept reading in the paper every day that their own coach thought they stunk.

  They figured, “Hey, if the coach thinks we can’t play, then maybe he’s right.”

  And they lost confidence.

  Even if a coach is dealt a weak hand of talent by the front office, he can’t keep going public with it. I’m not saying you should lie to the press. You can say, “We need to get a better performance out of player X.” Or you criticize your team in general terms, saying how everyone has to play better defense. But you don’t try to make yourself look good at the expense of the players.

  I confronted Hopkins about this. I told him, “If you want to chew out a guy, that’s your business. But take him in the locker room and do it in private. Then the players will respect you. But don’t tell reporters that you think some guy is a stiff or he’s stupid. It may sound funny to the people reading the paper, but not to your players. They don’t like it, and if I played for you, I wouldn’t like it, either. That crap belongs in the garbage can.”

  I’m not sure Hopkins fully understood what I was saying. He probably thought I was second-guessing him, but I was trying to help him, to save his job. I wasn’t running around telling everyone what I thought of how Bob handled the players and the press: I went right to him, man-to-man.

  But Hopkins’s insecurity just became worse.

  Finally, Schulman set up a meeting with Hopkins, Zollie Volchok, and myself. Things were bleak, as our record was something like 1-6.

  “I want to clear the air,” Schulman said.

  The idea was for Hopkins to say exactly what was on his mind, and he started up about the Fred Brown deal, how he wished we had Earl Tatum.

  “Listen,” I said. “Every time we talk about Fred Brown, I hear the same thing… what he can’t do. It’s always negative. What about the positive? What does Fred Brown do better than about any guard in the league? He shoots the ball. He’s in decent shape. Fred can help us because he can put the ball in the basket.”

  Hopkins seemed to accept that.

  “But Silas isn’t helping us,” he said. “The only reason he’s on the team is that he’s your friend.”

  That really set me off. I have a lot of friends. I don’t trade for a guy because he’s a friend, but because he can play. I said that.

  “Paul needs to get in better shape,” I admitted. “So you need to play him some. Not all the time, but some. We have to find out about him. If you play him and we see he can’t perform, I’ll trade him. If my mother was on the team and she couldn’t get the job done and you wanted to trade her, well, I’d trade her. I won’t stop loving her, but I’d trade her. My friendship with Silas won’t change if I have to trade him, but I’m telling you, Paul can be an asset.”

  We talked a little more. Hopkins was trying to grab on to anything that would take the heat off him.

  “You know who the real screw-up is?” he asked. “Slick Watts. It’s Slick. Right, it’s Slick. He’s the problem.”

  I sat there, dumbfounded. First it was Fred Brown. Then it was Silas. Now it was Slick Watts. I saw Sam look at Zollie. They were beginning to understand the problem, how Hopkins desperately needed a scapegoat.

  “Bob,” I said, “the only time we really disagreed was when I wouldn’t trade Fred Brown for Earl Tatum. You told me that you agreed with the other moves. You can’t say that you’re stuck with all these players that you didn’t want.”

  Hopkins said nothing after that. The meeting ended, and Hopkins went out to practice.

  “Well,” said Schulman, “what do you think?”

  “You have to give him a chance to pull the team together,” I said. “You hired him, so give him some time.”

  Time didn’t help Hopkins.

  Ten games into the season, Sam wanted to fire him again.

  “I just don’t think it would be fair to do it so soon,” I said, and I managed to keep Sam at bay for another week.

  But Zollie kept coming to me, asking if I’d coach the team. I kept insisting that Hopkins was the coach. Our record went to 5-13 … 5-14.

  Zollie asked me again about coaching. I knew Schulman was behind it.

  “I’m very happy doing what I’m doing,” I said.

  “Think about it,” he said.

  Later, I told Marilyn what Zollie and Sam had on their minds. She was against it. She didn’t want me to end up doing everything, being the GM and coach. She was still upset by what had happened the first time I coached in Seattle, and then in Portland. Both places, the team and record improved while I was there, yet I still was let go as coach.

  “Someone is always second-guessing you, no matter how good a job you do,” she said. “I don’t want to see you go through that again.”

  Marilyn was right. As a coach, you’re the one out front; you end up being responsible for just about everything with the team, even when a lot of that is out of your control.

  We lost again. The record was 5-15.

  “We still want you to coach,” Zollie said. “But I don’t blame you if you decide against it.”

  Now I seriously thought about coaching the team. I had either traded for or drafted most of the players. These were my guys. I kept telling Marilyn that I thought they could develop into a good team. If I was afraid to coach them, then something was wrong.

  We lost again, and the record dropped to 5-16.

  That game was against the New Jersey Nets, who were just awful. It happened at the Seattle Coliseum, and our fans booed us for much of the night. I was not at the game. Several months earlier, I had agreed to be at a restaurant opening in Tacoma. Schulman and Zollie knew that I was going to miss the game. When I arrived home, there were five messages, three from Sam and two from Zollie. They wanted to meet with me the next morning. I then called Les Habegger, who was our assistant coach, and he said what a miserable game it was, and how it seemed the players had given up.

  The next morning, Sam was livid. He was yelling, “He’s got to go! You hear me, he’s got to go!”

  I told Sam that I heard him. I could have been on Mars, and I’d have heard him.

  “You drafted the players,” he said. “You traded for them. You coach them.”

  To me, this was a challenge. Did I believe in the talent that I’d assembled?

  “I’ll take the job,” I said. “Under two conditions. I want an adjustment in my salary. And if I don’t like it at the end of the season, I can have my old job back.”

  Sam quickly agreed.

  The team was playing that night in Denver, but it was too late for me to fly there and make the game. So I planned to catch up with the team the following evening for the game in Kansas City.

  We lost again, the record falling to 5-17. After that game, Denver general manager Carl Scheer said we were one of the worst teams he’d ever seen. Some of the Denver players said the same thing.

  I didn’t believe that, but I also didn’t know how fast you could turn around a team that was totally disheartened, a team with a 5-17 record.

  Zollie told Hopkins that we were changing coaches. According to Zollie, Hopkins was relieved to hear the news. He just wanted out of the mess. We let him scout for us for the rest of the season, and he was content to do that because the pressure was off him.

  I took over the team in Kansas City.
I went with the same lineup that Hopkins had used the previous night: Fred Brown, Slick Watts, Bruce Seals, Marvin Webster, and Paul Silas. I had my doubts about the lineup, but I didn’t want to make big changes without at least having a practice to work in my ideas. My first goal was to instill some confidence in the players, because they were a discouraged group, about ready to just go through the motions for the final 60 games.

  “Tonight, let’s just run the plays you believe in,” I said before that first game. “If you don’t think a certain play will work, let’s not use it. And let’s let our quickness show. If you see a fast break, take it.”

  What often happens when a team changes coaches is that the players receive an immediate infusion of energy. That’s why so many teams win their first game after bringing in a new coach. The adrenaline doesn’t carry over for long, but for one night, it can really fire up a team.

  We jumped on Kansas City for a 17-point lead. Then we started to fall back. That had happened a lot during the season. We’d put together a nice lead, then blow it. But this time, we hung on to win a close game.

  That meant a lot to our morale.

  Our next game was in Boston, but we had a couple of days to practice. I didn’t like the lineup that Hopkins had been using: It wasn’t our strongest defensive lineup, and it also couldn’t score a lot. The only guy I wanted to keep as a starter was Marvin Webster.