Reposting the indepth article on Cooke

[Celtic4Hire@xxxxxxx]

I'm reposting the Cooke article since Cooke is going to be on our summer 
league team and you may not have read it. He just was MVP of the USBL. Is there a 
place for him on the Cs?

Summer league team: Bremer, Banks, Cooke, Kedrick, Hunter, Kendrick. Plenty 
of excitement.

DJessen33

<From:   JB <JimMetz@xxxx> 
Date:  Sun Jun 22, 2003  10:22 am
Subject:  "...he's heard from the Celtics ..."-New York Daily News

 
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New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

Cooke's recipe for success
By MICHAEL O'KEEFFE
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
Saturday, June 21st, 2003



Before the Hummer, before the $90 million shoe contract, before he was 
the No.1 pick in the NBA draft and a national sensation, LeBron James 
was just a promising 16-year-old from Ohio, looking to make a name for 
himself in one of the country's most prominent summer basketball camps.

Back in July 2001, the top dog at the annual ABCD Camp in Teaneck, 
N.J., was Lenny Cooke, the camp MVP in 2000. Cooke was a cocky Brooklyn 
kid with strong basketball skills but an atrocious academic record, a 
star on the court and a scrub in the classroom, floating from high 
school to high school, convinced by street agents and neighborhood 
riff-raff that he would soon star in the NBA alongside previous camp 
standouts Kobe Bryant and Tracy McGrady.

A big crowd converged around Court 2 at Fairleigh Dickinson's Rothman 
Center when Cooke and James finally squared off at the end of that 
week, eager to see how the rising Midwest hotshot stacked up against 
the Beast from the East. "It was like an Old West duel," remembers 
recruiting guru Tom Konchalski. "It was a young gunslinger coming into 
town, trying to make his reputation."

When the dust settled, James had scored 24, including a running 
three-pointer at the buzzer that gave his team an 85-83 victory. He 
held Cooke to nine points. "It's the game that catapulted LeBron into 
the national spotlight," Konchalski says.

Cooke, meanwhile, walked out the gym doors and basically faded away. He 
passed on college and declared himself eligible for the 2002 NBA draft. 
He wasn't selected. Scouts said he was skilled but unpolished, too 
arrogant and immature, too risky. If he was a 7-footer, maybe - but 6-6 
shooting guards and small forwards are a dime a dozen.

"Lenny Cooke has all the talent in the world," says Queens basketball 
consultant Rob Johnson. "But his head wasn't screwed on right, and NBA 
people knew that."

The agents and scouts stopped calling, the neighborhood leeches who had 
expected a big payday drifted away. Lenny Cooke was alone, 
opportunities were slipping away. He was forced to take a hard look at 
himself.

"I got a little big-headed," says Cooke, who turned 21 a few weeks ago. 
"In high school, I didn't take the game seriously. I listened to the 
hype. I believed the rankings. Now, I know I have to work at my game. I 
take it a lot more seriously."

This week, as the Cleveland Cavaliers prepare to sign James to a 
multi-million dollar contract, Cooke is wrapping up the season with the 
Brooklyn Kings of the United States Basketball League. It's a 
blue-collar league that pays its players about $400 a week and buses 
them to minor-league outposts like Enid, Okla., and Easton, Pa., but 
it's also been a starting point for dozens of NBA players, including 
Charlie Ward and Anthony Mason.

USBL players, mostly ex-college guys, are the best competition Cooke 
has ever faced, and he dominates these players just as he dominated in 
high school. Cooke is averaging 27 points per game, and singlehandedly 
destroyed the Brevard Blue Ducks on Wednesday, scoring 47 and grabbing 
17 rebounds in a 126-120 home victory at Long Island University.

"I think I can compete on the next level," Cooke says, the bravado 
gone, replaced by a quiet confidence. "Now I need someone to give me a 
fair look."

Kings coach Kenny Charles says scouts from the Sonics and Hawks have 
come to Brooklyn to see the resurrection of Lenny Cooke for themselves. 
Cooke's agent, Ken Glassman, says he's heard from the Celtics and 
several foreign clubs. Johnson says several teams - including the 
Knicks and Pistons - have asked him about Cooke.

"He had to hit bottom before he could work his way back up," says 
Tyrone Green, Cooke's former AAU coach. "But he's the real deal. He'll 
be back."

A TOUGH START

Lenny Cooke grew up in Bushwick with his mom and dad, two younger 
brothers and a sister. Home was a rat-infested cold-water flat, heated 
on freezing nights by an open oven. The neighbors were drug dealers, 
addicts and prostitutes. His parents provided love and support, he 
says, "but everything else I had to get on my own."

Cooke didn't start playing organized basketball until he was 15 years 
old, when Green, a former Long Island Panthers coach, saw him playing 
in a park and invited him to join his AAU team.

"He couldn't shoot, he couldn't dribble and he couldn't pass," laughs 
Debbie Bortner, a tall, blonde New Jersey mother whose son Brian played 
on the Panthers. "But he had the intangibles. You could see he was a 
star in the making."

School didn't come as easily. Cooke flunked out after his freshman year 
at Franklin K. Lane High in Queens. Green and Bortner helped him join 
Brian at LaSalle Academy in Manhattan, where his grades improved. He 
emerged as a basketball star during his sophomore year, leading his 
team deep into the city playoffs.

Cooke was the MVP at Rucker Park during the summer of 2001 and he put 
on a dominating performance at the ABCD Camp. He was widely regarded as 
one of the best prep players in the nation. But he started skipping 
school frequently. "They didn't do anything to penalize me," he says. 
"Everything was OK as long as I was playing basketball."

When Cooke's parents moved to Virginia, he moved into Bortner's home in 
a leafy, affluent New Jersey neighborhood. He enrolled at Northern 
Valley Regional High in Demarest, N.J., then bounced to Northern Valley 
in Old Tappan.

Bortner, who describes herself as Cooke's "secondary mother," succeeded 
for a time in keeping Cooke focused on school, trying to convince him 
to raise his grades and play for one of the many colleges - St. John's, 
Iowa, Miami, Villanova - that were recruiting him.

But Cooke, bored in quiet suburbia, feeling a little guilty about the 
friends he left behind, returned frequently to the old neighborhood, 
where the street agents and the hustlers told Cooke he was a lottery 
pick, that he was wasting time that could be used earning NBA green.

Then in February 2002, he told Bortner he was moving to the Detroit 
area to live with with former Michigan assistant coach Tee Green and 
prepare for the NBA draft. Bortner was furious, and the two didn't 
speak for almost a year.

"I tell the kids to use this sport to further your education, but the 
sharks were circling Lenny, making promises they couldn't keep," she 
says. "He paid a very heavy price for their despicable behavior."

The move out of Bortner's home was ill-fated from the start. Cooke 
attended Mott Adult School in Flint, but failed to get his diploma. 
Then he injured his right big toe on the first day of the pre-draft 
camp, eliminating his chance to impress general managers.

But the NBA passed on Cooke for other reasons - not enough experience 
in organized ball, they said, a suspect perimeter game, too much 
arrogance, not enough maturity. If the kid can't get it together for 
high school, how is he going to survive the NBA's grinding travel, the 
media criticism, the relentless 82-game schedule?

"We didn't think he was good enough," one Eastern Conference assistant 
coach says. "Lenny could have used a few years of college. Whoever was 
advising him gave him bad advice."

ON THE ROAD BACK

Rob Johnson, the self-styled hoops consultant from Queens, says he 
likes what he sees as he watches Cooke dismantle the Brevard Blue Ducks 
last week. Cooke's 47 points, he says, is impressive, but secondary.

"He's playing defense, he's making his free throws, he's passing to 
open teammates. His shooting is improving and he is going after every 
rebound," Johnson says.

Johnson says Cooke needs to work on his conditioning and his perimeter 
game if he hopes to make it to the NBA. "He looks tired," Johnson says. 
"In this league, he plays under the basket, but if he makes it to the 
NBA, it will be at shooting guard. If Lenny can hit his shot, he'll be 
a player in the NBA. Maybe not an All-Star, but he'll compete."

After he was passed over in the NBA draft, Cooke signed a free-agent 
contract with Seattle but didn't make the team, hampered by the toe 
injury and the fact that he had not played organized basketball since 
he left Old Tappan 18 months earlier.

Cooke says he didn't get frustrated after being snubbed in the draft, 
and he didn't lose hope after he was cut from the Sonics. But he admits 
he started to feel desperate when he was cut in November after a brief 
audition with the NBA's developmental league. He believes he wasn't 
given a chance because of a reputation for being unmotivated and 
uncoachable - a killer reputation that he calls unfair.

"A lot of people believe that and they don't even know me," he says. 
"I've never been in trouble. I don't know how to change it. The only 
thing I can do is play."

Cooke returned to New York and hooked up with a new agent, Ken 
Glassman, a former Bronx prosecutor who refuses to pamper Cooke and 
works him like a dog during workouts at Basketball City in Chelsea.

Cooke has also made amends with Bortner. "She helped me out a lot," he 
says. "But I had to make my own decisions."

Still, bad luck seems to stalk Cooke. When he tried out for the USBL's 
Westchester Wildfire earlier this year, he was fouled as he went up for 
a dunk, landed on his right arm and injured his elbow. Wildfire coach 
John Starks was ready to offer Cooke a job.

"He has NBA talent," the former Knick says. "He's a very intelligent 
player. He has a good attitude."

After his injury healed, he got scooped up by Kenny Charles and the 
Kings, not only because he's a a scoring machine, but because he puts 
fannies in the seats for a team that draws about 450 fans per game. In 
his debut in May, Cooke scored 33 points and drew about 100 fans, 
including his 3-year-old son, Anahijae.

Cooke hopes his success at the USBL will lead to an invitation to an 
NBA summer league.

"The word is out," Orlando general manager John Gabriel says. "With a 
little more experience, Lenny might make an impact in this league."

If he can make the most of that opportunity, Cooke says, he'll savor 
another run at LeBron James.

"He has got a lot of hype," Cooke says. "He's a good ballplayer, and I 
respect him and I wish him the best of luck. But he better be able to 
handle the hype." >