Wilkens’ Future as Coach Clouded

ATLANTA —  Lenny Wilkens could hardly bear to watch.

The winningest coach in NBA history had just seen his woeful Atlanta Hawks fail to execute a simple rotation on defense, leaving an opposing player alone in the corner for a 3-pointer.

As the ball swished through the net, Wilkens threw up his hands in disgust, turned away from the court and strolled along the sideline.

At the end of the season, he might just keep walking.

With the Hawks enduring what team president Stan Kasten bluntly calls “a disaster,” Wilkens’ future is a source of much speculation in Atlanta. He is closing in on 1,200 victories and still has two years left on a $20 million contract extension signed in 1997.

But every day seems to bring a new rumor: Wilkens wants out. The Hawks will fire the coach at year’s end. Both sides are trying to negotiate a buyout.

“There’s always speculation. I can’t stop it,” Wilkens said with a shrug. “It’s not in my control, so why worry about it? As long as I’m here, I’m going to work my butt off to get us back to where we should be.”

Wilkens, 62, had at least 50 victories in three of his first five years in Atlanta, then finished second in the Central after battling with Indiana until the final week of the strike-shortened season.

But in a bid to shake up a stale franchise and get it past the second round of the playoffs for the first time since moving to Atlanta in 1968, general manager Pete Babcock put together a controversial deal that sent leading scorer Steve Smith to the Portland Trail Blazers for Isaiah Rider and Jim Jackson.

Rider’s problems--arrests, tardiness, feuds with coaches--was well documented, but the Hawks were in need of a makeover as they moved into the new 19,445-seat Philips Arena. They wanted to dump Smith’s long-term contract and switch to an up-tempo offense with younger, faster players.

The trade turned out horribly for the Hawks.

Rider didn’t show up for the first day of training camp. He missed a practice after his cars were supposedly vandalized. He skipped a team flight to Detroit. Finally, after two suspensions and the threat of another for repeatedly showing up late, he was put on waivers with 18 games left in a lost season.

“If J.R. performs his role of 18 to 25 points a night and stays within the rough boundaries of the team concept, we’re as good as anybody in the East,” Kasten said. “That’s what is so frustrating.”

Instead of contending, the Hawks were on pace for their worst record since 1981 and will probably miss the playoffs for the first time since 1992, the year before Wilkens arrived.

The coach blames that elusive element known as chemistry, clearly pointing the finger at Rider for leading the team down the wrong path with his distracting behavior.

In the past, Wilkens always had self-motivating veterans like Grant Long and Tyrone Corbin to police the locker room. The Hawks had no such players this season, just a bunch of youngsters like Jason Terry, Dion Glover, Roshown McLeod, Cal Bowdler and Chris Crawford.

“All I know is we’ve had a tremendous amount of distractions and a lot of young guys who are impressionable,” Wilkens said. “Maybe they don’t know what it takes to get to this level night in and night out.”

He stoically watches a team that seems like a bunch of strangers running up and down the court.

“It’s the little things that bother you,” Wilkens said. “We miss a pass and heads drop. We don’t pick up the ball, so we don’t run back. Chemistry is understanding one another, supporting one another, talking with one another. It’s not 12 guys walking down the street holding hands. But you’ve got to have respect for one another.”

Kasten and Babcock say they won’t discuss Wilkens’ future until after the season. Besides, Babcock could wind up taking as much heat as the coach since he’s the one ultimately responsible for the Rider fiasco.

“The way we’ve played this season has got nothing to do with the coaches,” center Dikembe Mutombo said. “Lenny didn’t make all the decisions here, all the changes. All he could do was coach who was brought here.”

The trade with Portland was part of an overall makeover that brought seven new players to Atlanta. Mutombo believes Wilkens should get another year to bring all those elements together.

“They shouldn’t blame him for one failure,” Mutombo said.

There’s a perception that Wilkens would prefer an older, defense-oriented team, while the organization favors a more exciting style of play focusing on younger players.

Terry didn’t move into the lineup until March 6, spending most of the season on the bench behind journeyman Bimbo Coles. Only in the past week have Glover and Bowdler gotten meaningful playing time.

Kasten points to the games where the Hawks have shown tantalizing glimpses of their potential. They swept New York at home, and they won at Indiana, Seattle, Sacramento and Toronto.

Next season, Atlanta will probably have its highest draft pick in years, plus the financial flexibility to further tweak the roster with sign-and-trade deals.

“The future is fine,” Kasten said confidently. “It’s just this year that’s been a nightmare.”

Will Wilkens be a part of that future?