MARIETTA - Atlanta Hawks Coach Lenny Wilkens has had help from his family keeping his perspective despite the pressure of professional basketball.

Coaching in Seattle, where he brought a team from 5-17 record on the finals, he was tensely watching his team battle the Los Angeles Lakers in a see-saw game. As two point leads went from one side to the other he felt a hand tapping him on the shoulder.

Who could have gotten through security to the bench, he wondered. “Dad, I’m hungry,” his son said. “Can I have a dollar for a hot dog?”

The experience has had lasting value, Wilkens said in a speech at the Shepherd’s Night dinner for priests and Serra Clubs Feb. 9. No matter how important his coaching may seem, to his son he was still, first and foremost, a father. That role was the only one that had meaning to his child.

Seeing other coaches throw chairs at referees and lose their composure made him wonder about becoming a coach, Wilkens said. After coaching himself he has learned “it is all in how you do things.”

“Most people want to be successful if you can help them or show them how to achieve,” he said.

Wilkens, who is now the coach with the most wins in the history of professional basketball, grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. and began his basketball career at Providence College, after a Brooklyn priest encouraged him to try for a scholarship.

Calling himself an optimist, who wakes up saying, “‘Good morning, God’ not ‘good God, it’s morning,’” Wilkens expressed disappointment that Atlanta media and the public are not more supportive of the Hawks.

“It’s the first town I’ve ever been to where even before the season starts they start putting the team down,” he said.

Last season the Hawks, “overachieved,” he said, and this season, after losing Danny Manning and making other trades, “we’re finally starting to jell a little bit.”

“We are certainly going to try and get a marquee player,” he commented.

Wilkens was the speaker at the annual dinner given by the Serra Clubs to encourage and thank the priests of the archdiocese. Several hundred people attended the dinner held at St. Ann’s Church, Marietta. Wilkens was introduced by Steve Holman, sports director of WGST Radio, Hawks announcer and member of St. Jude’s Parish in Sandy Springs. Wilkens belongs to the Cathedral of Christ the King.

He was given a statue of Serra Club patron, Blessed Junipero Serra, a Franciscan missionary of the 1800s.

“We were amused, we were motivated, we were encouraged by his talk,” Archbishop John F. Donoghue said. “The coach really is a great example to young people.”

Archbishop Donoghue also expressed his gratitude to Serra Club members who work to encourage vocations to the priesthood and Religious life. “The one thing I would ask of you is to continue to work with your pastors to form vocation committees in our parishes,” he said. “I would like to see a vocations committee in each one of our parishes.”