Lenny and Frank…What Brooklyn Leadership Has Always Been About…

“We can’t control whether we always win or lose, but we can always go out there and make sure we have fun” -Frank Layden

I have been more than blessed to have been around so many people of amazing character, grit, and grace in my life all of whom I hope have had a profound influence not just on me as I knew them during our time together but on literally millions of others.

Two of those people with similar roots I have been thinking about in the past few days…one we just lost, one is still with us but is getting on in years, and very rightfully, just had a statue erected in his honor as the team he once led won the NBA title last month (albeit in a different city).

Both are Brooklyn guys, longtime removed.

Frank Layden and Lenny Wilkens. Watch this great tribute to Frank Layden here, and a solid story on Lenny Wilkens by our friend Andy Furman here.

I was lucky enough to have spent time with both these Hall of Fame people while I was with the Knicks, and the impact both had on me personally and professionally is indelible.

First on Coach Wilkens. A man of quiet grace and elegance, he was honored with a statue in his adopted hometown of Seattle a few weeks ago, as the Oklahoma City Thunder (the former Seattle Supersonics) were on their way to the NBA Championship. Always understated and a deep thinker, I always treasured the time I got to spend talking to coach Wilkens about Brooklyn, leadership, motivating people and his love and amazement of New York in general. There was one conversation we had about the subway, and how he and his mom used it as a lifeline growing up in Brooklyn, and how to this day he couldn’t figure out how such a chaotic city found its way literally underground. He always looked around and talked to the ushers, the security guys, and the older fans, because he said, those were the people when he was young who he saw as role models. Lenny’s time in New York as head coach will probably be lost to memory in the turbulent years of the Knicks, but one thing that should be noted. It was his last head coaching stop unfortunately, but it may have been one of his best even though it was only a year. He led the Knicks to their only playoff appearance in the early 2000’s and figured out a way to have Stephon Marbury and Keith Van Horn click as a pair, getting the Knicks four games over .500 at the All-Star break that year before Van Horn was traded for Tim Thomas and the club sputtered into the playoffs. Lenny was let go in January the following year, and instead of an exit press conference my last memory of him was walking quietly out of the Garden on that January day. Quiet, unassuming and Brooklyn strong, more than worthy of his new statue.

Then there was Coach Layden. I was lucky enough to have worked with two Layden’s, Frank and his son Scott, during my Knicks tenure. Frank was always the voice of reason when he came into the office, and we would sit together talking about leadership and the values that we should hold dear. Scott has always remained a friend over the years, and everywhere he has been he has set a standard for how people should be treated regardless of wins and losses. The Layden’s always lived, and will continue to live, much bigger than the game.

In addition to all the stories and the laughter and the leadership Coach Layden espoused, he never shied away from his gritty Brookyln roots. So much so that every summer he would go back to Brooklyn with another Knicks old time staff member, Frank Murphy, and go to a Brooklyn Cyclones game and ride the Cyclone, with a stop at Nathans.  While I never went with the pair, and those old timers trips stopped quite a while ago, they were always a great source of pride that reconnected the old time hoopsters with the current hipsters of Brooklyn.

While they both had their styles to achieve success, there were indelible traits that ran through both…integrity, empathy, grace, courage, balance, community.

Those words are thrown around probably way too easily these days, but both men lived…and have lived…by examples for decades. Old school maybe, timeless for sure.

Brooklyn guys for the ages, whose impact will be timeless.