{"id":18352,"date":"2020-12-16T11:58:12","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T17:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myboysay.com\/blog\/?p=18352"},"modified":"2020-12-16T11:58:12","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T17:58:12","slug":"hall-of-famer-wilkens-recalls-his-great-teammate-dennis-guimares-a-man-of-sport-a-teacher-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myboysay.com\/blog\/?p=18352","title":{"rendered":"Hall of Famer Wilkens recalls his ‘great’ teammate, Dennis Guimares: A man of sport, a teacher of life"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hall of Famer Wilkens recalls his ‘great’ teammate Guimares<\/h1>\n<\/header>\n
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\"Dennis<\/picture>
Dennis Guimares\u00a0<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Former<\/picture>
LENNY WILKINS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n
Sixty years ago, Wilkens was a senior and star point guard for the Friars. He helped lay the groundwork for not one, but two, NIT championships in the three years after he ascended as a first-round pick, No. 6 overall, in the NBA draft.<\/strong><\/p>\n
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The NIT was the precursor to the NCAA tournament and the Friars were a huge deal in New England back then. Legendary Joe Mullaney coached the likes of Wilkens, Hartford\u2019s Johnny Egan and 6-foot-10 center Jim Hadnot. Raymond Flynn came after Wilkens had departed. So did John Thompson, Jimmy Walker and Marvin Barnes. They flowed through the Providence pipeline, one could argue, because of Lenny Wilkens.<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of Wilkens\u2019 teammates in the 1959-60 season was not a star. He was a 6-foot guard from New Haven, a shooter with perfect form, who was used by Mullaney in a reserve role in the 1958-59, 1959-60 and 1960-61 seasons, mainly to give Egan a breather. This gentleman became a superstar a little later on, after he settled in Middletown.<\/strong><\/p>\n

To the Friars, he was \u201cDenny\u201d Guimares. Middletown knew him as Dennis Guimares \u2014 teacher, coach, mentor, friend, father figure, genuinely great guy and as likable as a no-look pass.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cDenny was a great teammate \u2014 a GREAT teammate,\u201d Wilkens, 83, recalled in a phone interview with the Press over the weekend. \u201cA wonderful, wonderful man.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Guimares, who died last Monday in Florida at the age of 82, and Wilkens were teammates for just two seasons, 1958-59 and \u201959-60. In that era, freshmen played on the freshmen team. Essentially, everyone was a three-year \u201cvarsity\u201d player.<\/strong><\/p>\n

From the deep catalog of his basketball mind, Wilkens, a two-time All American, looks back on those years with appreciation. The Friars won 20 and 24 his final two seasons, reaching the 1960 NIT final before winning it all in \u201861, Guimares\u2019 senior year, 62-59 over Saint Louis.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a lot of fun together back then,\u201d Wilkens said. \u201cWe all got along very well. We had a fun team and we were all very competitive. Dennis came off the bench and he produced. He played well for us. We got to be friends.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Basketball teams are a tight bunch ordinarily, but this group of players came together at a New England Catholic college at the heart of the civil rights movement. It was a pivotal point in history and their lives in a number of ways.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201cAt that time at Providence, there had to be only about eight or nine minorities in the whole school,\u201d Wilkens said. \u201cIt was more because it cost to go there and none us had that kind of money. If we didn\u2019t have a scholarship \u2026 . We stuck together.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wilkens and Guimares maintained their friendship after college and would see each other on occasion when Wilkens visited the East Coast with his current NBA team (he played for four teams from 1960-75). They would sometimes catch up at Bill Russell\u2019s home outside Boston. The opportunity was born from Guimares\u2019 relationship with his college roommate Hadnot, who had come east from the San Francisco area to play for Mullaney. Russell was Hadnot\u2019s guardian.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the 1980s, when Wilkens was at the tail end of his second tour as coach of the Seattle SuperSonics, he hosted Guimares and teacher colleagues George Baldwin, Hank Koritkoski and Craig Lundell. All were in town attending a high school coaches\u2019 convention that doubled as a golf outing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe all went over to Lenny\u2019s house and he told us before he even broke the news that he was going to leave the organization,\u201d said Baldwin. \u201cHe told us he didn\u2019t like the way it was going. Sure enough, a couple of months later \u2026 \u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wilkens\u2019 basketball career has been well documented. He was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame on three occasions \u2014 as a nine-time All-Star player, as a winner of 2,664 games as an NBA head coach of six teams (he led the 1979 Sonics to the title) and as an assistant on the 1992 Olympic Dream Team.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Guimares\u2019 playing career ended in the \u201861 NIT championship game. He eventually settled in Middletown, where he raised a family and forged a 30-plus-year career as a social studies teacher at Woodrow Wilson and post-merger Middletown High. He coached boys basketball at Wilson from 1967-84 and nearly won a state championship in 1981 against a powerhouse St. Thomas Aquinas program.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve played for a number of coaches in a few different sports and, trust me, there were a lot of coaches that ran practice and coached games on auto pilot. But not G Man,\u201d said Rick Romano, a key player on the 1981 team. \u201cHe knew the game. He played the game. He wasn\u2019t a teacher in the school who decided to coach. He was a great basketball player. The drills he taught us, he didn\u2019t read in a book.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHe knew how to get the best out of us and he knew the game inside and out. We had these Saturday morning practices from nine until noon that were legendary. After a Friday night game. It was a great time to be playing high school basketball. It was an honor to play for the G Man.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

About halfway through his 18 years of coaching Wildcats basketball, Guimares helped launch the boys and girls golf programs at the school. This was early on in the Title IX era, when girls teams finally had the opportunity to compete. Guimares was instrumental in expanding the girls game in schools. Before they played in their own state championship tournament starting in 2003, girls teams would compete for the Guimares Cup at season\u2019s end.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When he wasn\u2019t coaching golf in the spring or organizing the Blue Dragons\u2019 yearly April trek to Myrtle Beach, Guimares and his wife Kathy would spoil themselves with golf excursions. They, the Baldwins, Koritkoskis and Lundells formed the \u201c8-pack.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe did go to Scotland and played at St. Andrews. It was probably the highlight of our golfing careers,\u201d Baldwin said.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dennis Guimares was my ninth-grade American History teacher in 1983-84, the final year of the Wildcats. He stood at the head of the class most times with a 7-iron or 9-iron in one hand and paced as he taught. He was a pleasant guy who never talked down to students. Along with instruction about the wars, slavery, the presidents and the amendments to the Constitution, he would speak about the Black experience in America \u2014 and his own experiences in particular. For a young, impressionable kid, those lessons were as important as any he would teach.<\/strong><\/p>\n

From New Haven, to Providence, to Middletown, Dennis Guimares lived a full and rewarding life. And he had perfect form with his shot. Lenny Wilkens can tell you that and more.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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