A Star in His Own Right : Wilkins Doesn’t Believe He Got His Due in Atlanta, Where He Ranked Among NBA’s Best but Never Took Hawks to a Title

“Dominique! Dominique! Dominique!” screamed the crowd behind the barricades as Dominique Wilkins boarded the Clipper team bus after a recent game at the Houston Summit.

“From the way they’re yelling, you’d think he was a movie star,” said a security guard.

Wilkins isn’t a movie star, but he elicits the same type of response because of his flashy dunks.

The ninth-leading scorer in NBA history, Wilkins was flying long before Air Jordan took off, winning two slam-dunk championships and an NBA scoring title.

But Wilkins, an eight-time All-Star who is headed for the Hall of Fame, believes he hasn’t gotten the respect that Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan received because he is perceived as a one-dimensional player and hasn’t won an NBA championship.

“Personally, I never felt that I got respect,” Wilkins said. “The fans were always great to me in Atlanta, and my peers around the league knew what kind of player I was and they gave me my respect.

“It made me angry sometimes because it was almost like I wasn’t there and I’ve been up among the league’s top players for a long time and have never gotten the credit for it.”

Wilkins’ peers agree.

“ ‘Nique gets shafted,” Jordan told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution last season. “He’s among the top five players in the league, but because he’s the star of the show, he gets blamed for everything. . . . If the Hawks ever won a championship, or even came close, that stuff would stop.”

Although Wilkins helped the Hawks put together four 50-victory seasons in the 1980s, they never advanced beyond the Eastern Conference semifinals.

Atlanta, which already has clinched a playoff spot, got off to the best start in team history under new Coach Lenny Wilkens this season, and Wilkins believed he finally had a chance to win an NBA title.

He lost that opportunity, though, when the Hawks traded him to the Clippers last month for disgruntled forward Danny Manning.

“The trade was unjustifiable,” Wilkins said. “No one has found a reason why it happened. It wasn’t because of my abilities. Maybe it was a contractual thing. If you want to win a championship, you win it now, you don’t try to plan for later. That doesn’t make any sense. I don’t have any idea what they were trying to do.”

Wilkins, whose scoring average decreased from 29.9 points last season to 24.4 with the Hawks this season before the trade, said the Hawks asked him to shoot less, then criticized his production after he was gone.

“They wanted me to change my game at the beginning of the year for the betterment of the team, and I’ve never had a problem with adjusting my game to the style of basketball we needed to play,” Wilkins said. “But I don’t think I got credit for that because after I left Atlanta they said my productivity was down and that I wasn’t scoring as much. But I thought I was having a great year.

“If you look at the plays we ran in Atlanta, I wasn’t involved in the offense. I was like the fourth or fifth option, and I was still getting 24 or 25 a night. And after the trade was made it was like, ‘You could tell Wilkins was fading.’ I was getting 24 a night. What were you people talking about? But I can still score with the best of them. Most guys around the league will tell you I haven’t slowed down at all.”

The departure of Wilkins, who had played his entire 11 1/2-year NBA career with the Hawks, sparked protest among Atlanta fans. An Atlanta newspaper published a special section on Wilkins, and a TV station sent a crew to Los Angeles with Wilkins to record his Clipper debut.

“He was in Georgia for so long that it was hard for him to leave,” said Wilkins’ wife, Nicole. “He really felt hurt. They handled it poorly. They didn’t tell (him of the trade) directly, they tried to do it through me. He thought, after 12 years, he deserved at least that.”

Wilkins hasn’t sulked, though, since joining the Clippers, averaging 30.3 points, 7.3 rebounds, 2.4 assists and 1.3 steals in his first 12 games. He has scored 30 or more points in eight games and has led the team in scoring nine times.

“I was disappointed at the beginning, but as I look back on it, I just have to move on with my life,” Wilkins said. “Life is full of changes and you have to make the best of the changes. Actually, I think it was the best change of my career because sometimes when you’re at a place for so long you get unappreciated because they’re used to seeing you all the time. I like to look at the positive side of things.”

Although the Clippers said after the trade that they hoped Wilkins would finish his career with the team, Steve Kauffman, Wilkins’ agent, said last weekend that Wilkins would test the free-agent market at the end of the season because he has been unable to work out a deal with the Clippers. Wilkins is reportedly seeking a $21-million, three-year contract.

“I’m thinking about it, but I don’t let it affect my ability to play,” Wilkins said. “I leave that up to them and see what they want to do and go from there. If you’re serious about winning, you do the right thing.”

Clipper Coach Bob Weiss, who coached Wilkins for three seasons in Atlanta, says Wilkins, 34, has improved with age.

“You’d think that 21 was his age, not his number,” Weiss said.

The trade has revitalized the Clippers, who are 6-6 in the 12 games Wilkins has played since joining them.

“The biggest thing he’s given us is just an enthusiastic lift,” Weiss said. “All the uncertainty is gone.”

Said rookie forward Harold Ellis: “Before the trade, everybody was uptight. But everybody is relaxed now. Everybody is feeling good about themselves. There’s a much better atmosphere. People didn’t even talk before, everybody was mad at each other. We have a totally different attitude.”

The Clippers, who were averaging 101.5 points before Wilkins arrived, have averaged 110.8 since. And the scoring averages of guards Ron Harper and Mark Jackson have also gone up because they have more open shots because Wilkins is routinely double-teamed.

“Dominique has lifted everybody’s game up because he’s that good,” Jackson said. “What I do best is get guys involved, and it’s certainly good to have a guy who can flat-out score. He’s a joy to play with, no question.”

The Hawks, who won their first five games after the deal, said Manning is a better team player than Wilkins, because he’s not so reluctant to pass.

“When Danny’s not open, he gets rid of the ball-- boom , it’s in your hands,” Hawk center Jon Koncak told Sports Illustrated. “I know it makes me a much better shooter to get the pass when I expect it rather than with two seconds on the shot clock after someone has dribbled and weaved and spun and couldn’t get their shot, then flicked it to me and said, ‘Launch it.’ ”

Wilkins dismissed the criticism.

“It was uncalled-for,” he said. “Of all the guys in this league, (for) Koncak to say something. . . . I was very disappointed in him for saying something negative. The trade was done, just leave it along. I could see if it was anybody else, a legitimate player.”

The leading scorer in Hawk history with 23,292 points, Wilkins faces his former team for the first time since the trade when the Clippers play at Atlanta tonight.

“It will be emotional to the point where the fans will be happy to see me,” Wilkins said. “But as far as playing against them, I’ll treat (the Hawks) like I treat everybody else.”

Wilkins has expanded his shot selection since suffering a torn right Achilles’ tendon in January of 1992. Although the injury cost him a spot on the 1992 U.S. Olympic basketball team, it probably extended his career. Once known primarily as a dunker, Wilkins takes more three-point shots now.

“A lot of people thought I could never come back and that my career was over, but I’m a competitor and I was going to come back, no matter what,” Wilkins said. “It was a tough nine months (of rehabilitation). It made me more serious about my game and about me as a person. It gave me more focus.”

Wilkins returned from the career-threatening injury to have one of his best seasons in 1992-93, finishing second to Jordan with an average of 29.9 points.