Wilkens and Jones Join Hall of Fame

Two outstanding guards who played and coached against each other, K. C. Jones of the Boston Celtics and Lenny Wilkens of the Cleveland Cavaliers, have been elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame, officials announced today.

Also to be enshrined May 9 is William (Pop) Gates, 71, who played with the New York Renaissance and other teams during the game’s barnstorming years in the 1930s and 1940s.

“I’m very honored,” said Wilkens, who ranks third in the NBA in career assists with 7,211. “K. C. was a fine player.”

Wilkens, a standout at Providence College, averaged 16.5 points and 6.7 assists a game during a 15-year professional career with St. Louis, Seattle, Portland and Cleveland. Before coming to Cleveland two seasons ago, he coached at Portland and Seattle, where his 1979 team won the NBA championship.

‘Pleasant Surprise’

He will coach the East Team in Sunday’s NBA All-Star game in Houston, an honor Jones had for four straight years.

“It’s a very pleasant surprise,” said Jones, who for years was overshadowed by his college and pro teammate Bill Russell. “I was happy just to have been nominated.

“This is the sort of thing that happens to superstars, all-stars and scorers and not people who can’t shoot,” Jones said. “At San Francisco (where he and Russell won two NCAA championships) and the pros, my contribution was my brain, not my scoring ability. I just did the blue-collar-type things.”

Jones averaged 7.4 points a game in his nine-year playing career with the Celtics, during which Boston won eight straight NBA championships, but he contributed an average 4.9 assists and could make his presence felt in clutch games.

Stepped Down Last Season

After his retirement as a player, Jones coached the Celtics to the 1984 and 1986 NBA championships. He stepped down as Celtics coach last season.

Although Jones, the 18th person associated with the Celtics to be enshrined, was elected the first year he was nominated and Wilkens on the second try, Hall of Fame Director Joe O’Brien said he is “shocked” at some of the players rejected by the honors committee.

“I can defend the purity of the process. But the basketball fan in me can’t believe Earl Monroe or Dave Bing isn’t in the Hall of Fame,” said O’Brien, who doesn’t have a vote. “If you assume a player has to have affected the game, certainly Monroe, who was one of the first fancy-Dan, one-on-one players to make it work, belongs.”

But for the third straight year, Monroe failed to get the needed 18 votes from the 24-member honors committee, composed of three representatives from each of eight different geographical regions.