Wilkens recalls his ‘great’ teammate Guimares

Lenny Wilkens was asked to rummage his mind for the Providence College years. He dug up some good stuff.

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.

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’s 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.

One of Wilkens’ 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.

To the Friars, he was “Denny” Guimares. Middletown knew him as Dennis Guimares — teacher, coach, mentor, friend, father figure, genuinely great guy and as likable as a no-look pass.

“Denny was a great teammate — a GREAT teammate,” Wilkens, 83, recalled in a phone interview with the Press over the weekend. “A wonderful, wonderful man.”

Guimares, who died last Monday in Florida at the age of 82, and Wilkens were teammates for just two seasons, 1958-59 and ’59-60. In that era, freshmen played on the freshmen team. Essentially, everyone was a

Guimares

Wilkens