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    So Many Lennys Are Trying to Make It

*By HARVEY ARATON*

LENNY COOKE had the ball on the left side of the floor, a hop in his
step, a gleam in his eye. No. 33 in the home whites of the Brooklyn
Kings, he turned on the defender and began to back his way in.

"O.K., right here, he should be turning, facing, faking, going right
around his man,'' said a courtside observer, the original King from
Brooklyn, the Knicks' legend named Bernard. "You don't get the ball 20
feet from the basket and back your man in, at least not at the next 
level."

Cooke, continuing to use his posterior as a power drill, pounded the
ball, as the defender gave ground. Tim Duncan was not coming to help;
nor was anyone else. Inevitably, Cooke was deep into the paint,
perfectly positioned to force a foul.

Bernard King, unimpressed, noted Cooke's shooting guard's size, a
muscular 6 feet 6 inches, and said: "In the N.B.A., he's not going to be
able to do that. He's going to have to make a quick move to the basket
or create separation to get off his jumper.''

The basket did account for 2 of Cooke's 47 points in the Kings' 126-120
victory over the Brevard Blue Ducks on Tuesday night at the Schwartz
Center on the Long Island University campus in downtown Brooklyn.
Forty-seven points in a professional basketball game - even in the
United States Basketball League - must mean something, but what?

Did they suggest that Cooke is still the prospect he was heralded as
when he went one on one with LeBron James a couple of years ago at one
of those meat-market camps for high school studs?

James recently signed with Nike for a reported $90 million and will be
anointed next week as the Chosen One, the first pick of the 2003 N.B.A.
draft, by the Cleveland Cavaliers. Cooke declared himself eligible last
year after a transient scholastic life and wound up unemployed, until
landing this spring with the Kings, in the borough he grew up in, for
paychecks of a few hundred dollars.

Just turned 21, he is averaging about 30 points a game in a
budget-challenged league that has, nonetheless, graduated dozens to the
aforementioned next level. The competition, an assortment of former
college players, some of whom tasted the big time, most of whom are
passing time, represents the best Cooke has faced. Yet if it is possible
to score 47 points and grab 17 rebounds and not answer the most
pertinent questions regarding his future, this is the place.

"What you're looking for is the ability to shoot the jumper, put the
ball on the floor, draw double teams, kick it to the open man," King
said. "You're looking for the fundamentals, the conditioning, the
ability to not play down to the competition."

In downtown Brooklyn as part of a promotion, King, whose unique post-up
game and explosive turnaround jump shot made him, at 6-7, virtually
impossible to guard straight up during his prime, was responding less to
Cooke's results than to the rudiments of his game.

Of course King was familiar with LeBron but no, he had not heard of
Lenny. How could it be, King asked, that Cooke was rated so high and
veered so far off course? He listened to the story, with all the modern
trappings: the academic woes, the high school hopping, the circle of
sycophants, the bad advice to turn pro despite no evidence he was high
on any team's list.

"So many of these young kids think it's all about talent," King said.
"That's what I told these guys before the game: be honest with yourself
when you ask, did I work as hard as I could, harder than I did last time."

He noticed Cooke trailing too much in defensive transition and bending
over, hands on his knees, when play was stopped. But he liked his nose
for the ball, his willingness to pass, his jump-shot range when Cooke
hit a 3-pointer from the left wing, albeit his only perimeter basket of
18 shots made.

"In fairness, he's playing out of position," King said, a situation
Cooke would later explain as life in a league with few quality big men.

After a year and a half out of organized ball, Cooke is playing again,
and that, ultimately, is what those 47 points most meant. He said he had
rid himself of his posse and reconnected with Debbie Bortner, the New
Jersey woman whose family Cooke lived with for a year and who cheered
him on Tuesday night. He has an agent - a former Bronx prosecutor, Ken
Glassman - who doesn't tell him he is LeBron, or the next best thing.

"The phone is ringing," Glassman said. "There's interest for N.B.A.
summer league teams."

Seattle has called and Boston, too, but every year now the odds get
worse as the N.B.A. talent pool has widened to welcome the world.

Too few LeBrons, so many Lennys, young men who embody an American system
churning out players who are, sadly, overindulged and underprepared.

"I got bigheaded a little bit," Cooke said. "Now I'm just working on my
game, four hours a day.

"Maybe," he decided, "last year wasn't my time."

In time, so long as he keeps playing, keeps working, who knows? Far away
from courtside, taken from a box score, 47 points represent more than
half of what the Nets mustered per game against the Spurs. Thirty a
night on average, in any league, should earn Cooke the chance at least
to prove he can take his game outside the paint and the county of Kings.