Lenny Wilkens, a 3-time inductee into the Hall of Fame, has died,

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SEATTLE (AP) — Lenny Wilkens, a three-time Basketball Hall of Fame inductee who was inducted as both a player and coach, has died, his family said Sunday. He was 88.

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The family said Wilkens was surrounded by loved ones when he died and did not immediately release a cause of death.

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Wilkens was one of the best point guards of his time, who later brought his calm and savvy style of play, first as a player-coach, and then developed into one of the game's greatest coaches.

He coached 2,487 NBA games, which is still a record. He went into the Hall of Fame as a player, as a coach and again on the 1992 U.S. Olympic team, on which he was an assistant. Wilkens also helped the Americans win gold at the 1996 Atlanta Games.

He succeeded Butch Carter as head coach of the Raptors in 2000 and led the team to its first post-season series triumph when they eliminated the New York Knicks in the first round. After an injury-plagued 2002–03 season in which the Raptors finished with a dismal 24–58 record, Wilkens and the team agreed to part ways.

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“Lenny Wilkens represented the very best in the NBA — as a Hall of Fame player, a Hall of Fame coach and one of the game's most respected ambassadors,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Sunday. “So much so that four years ago Lenny received a unique honor: he was named one of the league's 75 greatest players and 15 greatest coaches of all time.”

Wilkens was a nine-time All-Star as a player, the first person to reach 1,000 wins as an NBA coach, and the second person to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player and coach. He coached the Seattle SuperSonics to an NBA title in 1979 and remained a cult figure in the city for the rest of his life, often considered something of a godfather of basketball in Seattle, which lost the Sonics to Oklahoma City in 2008 and has been trying to bring the team back ever since.

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And he did all this with grace, which he was proud of.

“Leaders don’t shout and scream,” Wilkens told KOMO News in Seattle earlier this year.

Wilkens, the 1994 NBA Coach of the Year with Atlanta, retired with 1,332 coaching wins, a league record that was later broken by Don Nelson (who retired with 1,335 wins) and then by Gregg Popovich (who retired with 1,390 wins).

Wilkens played 15 seasons with the St. Louis Hawks, SuperSonics, Cleveland Cavaliers and Portland Trail Blazers. He was a five-time All-Star with St. Louis, three with Seattle and once with Cleveland in 1973 at age 35. In June, a statue commemorating his time with the SuperSonics was erected outside Climate Pledge Arena.

“Even more impressive than Lenny’s basketball accomplishments, including two Olympic gold medals and an NBA championship, was his commitment to service—especially in his beloved Seattle area, where there is a statue in his honor,” Silver said. “He impacted 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 outstanding mentor who led with integrity and true class.”

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Wilkens led the league in assists twice while also being a standout scorer. He scored double-digit points in every season of his career except for his final season in 1974-75 with the Trail Blazers. His best season as a scorer came in his first season with the SuperSonics in 1968–69, when he averaged 22.4 points, 8.2 assists and 6.2 rebounds.

Leonard Wilkens was born on October 28, 1937 in New York. His basketball training took place on the playgrounds of Brooklyn and at the city's Powerhouse, then an all-boys high school, where one of his teammates was major league baseball star Tommy Davis. He went on to become a star at Providence and was drafted sixth overall by the Hawks in 1960.

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