Lenny Cooke crashing out trying to get attention….. yes he photoshopped this 🧐🤨😧

[Still Benefited]

He got JJ a job with no qualifications,Lenny cant apply for a podcast appearance?

 

[Methodical]

This is sad for real. This shyt is still bothering him for the rest of his life.

If you watched the documentary about him so you would understand why he was depressed and shyt.

 

[Methodical]

This man gonna be 60 one day on a corner telling the youngins that he was once better than LeBron James while they roll their eyes at the old man who insists he was better if only his coach didn't screw him.

Even worse, his son didn't believe he had played with Bron and against Bron. His son was like when Lenny told the story about him and Bron in the documentary.

 

[NYC Rebel]

The living embodiment of

 

[King Poetic]

all dude had to do is just be average academically and had someone around to tell him those agents was bullshyttin about u being a highly selected player in the draft

 

[Yapdatfool]

If 'do you know anyone who peaked in high school' thread was a person

 

[thaKEAF]

Smh that doc on him is sad

 

[FTBS]

Its a sad, cautionary tale. Because of how his academic career went moreso than the hoop stuff. His academic issues shoulda been identified and adressed way earlier. There very well might not have been any hoop stuff, well at least to the level it got, if he was in the right grade. Dude was 19 at that legendary ABCD camp with Bron in 2001. Bron was 16. He was 2 full years older than Melo as well. They werent peers. During the time when he was a HS phenom he shoulda been in college.

 

[Erratic415]

Dudes wiki page is sad

It is.

It seemed like he could have had a nice career overseas if not for the car accident.

Star-to-Be Who Never Was (Published 2012)

Lenny Cooke has yet to discover what or who he is supposed to be since it became obvious years ago that he would not fulfill his once presumed destiny and become an N.B.A. star.

www.nytimes.com

Cooke averaged about 30 points a game in the U.S.B.L., and that earned him a shot with the Boston Celtics’ summer-league team. He had a couple of decent games and relished the challenge of matching up against Cleveland and James, the top pick of the 2003 draft. But Cooke did not play a minute. James, already hailed as the King, took a moment to console him.

Cooke played a season in the Philippines, then drifted to China for a spell. By December 2004, his now-transient life took him to Southern California, where he headed out for dinner on a rainy night after a game with a teammate from the Long Beach Jam of the American Basketball Association. Cooke was not wearing a seat belt when his teammate Nick Sheppard crashed his car into a light post.

Cooke awoke from a coma, spent months in a wheelchair, fortunate that his shattered left leg did not have to be amputated, as doctors first feared. Limping, still dreaming, he returned to the Philippines, then tore his Achilles’. Back in the old Continental Basketball Association with the Rockford Lightning, the coach, Chris Daleo, saw that Cooke had never properly rehabilitated his leg. He was overweight.

“I put him with our trainer and thought if we could get him back in shape, he still might play somewhere,” Daleo said. “Lenny was a likable guy, somebody you wanted around. You just wished you could turn back the clock for him. Even when he was out of shape, dragging his leg, you could see he had the tools. LeBron is what you had, only rawer.”

But after the team moved to Minot, N.D., Cooke blew out his other Achilles’. Bad luck compounding imprudent decisions, his career was over, a half-dozen years after his showdown with James. The question echoed: was Cooke ever really that good or merely the beneficiary of the New York buzz?

“You can’t put him in the group of New York guys that were overhyped,” Vaccaro said.
“What it came down to was a complete mistrust in who and what he was. Teams were afraid.”

Vaccaro insisted that Cooke’s shattered hoop dreams were far more authentic than those of William Gates and Arthur Agee, chronicled by the director of “Hoop Dreams,” Steve James.

“Lenny was on the pedestal because he was one of those elite guys,” Vaccaro said. “He was damn good. I just think he blew it all.”

 

[ThaBronxBully]

Him Adding Him & His Son To That Pic Is Straight Embarrassing

 

[Killer Instinct]

Still exhibiting some of the same character traits that played a small role in him to going from #1 to undrafted.

 

[MJ Truth]

This lowkey one of the saddest threads I read on the Coli. I know we talk about letting go and moving on, but it's a tough pill to swallow knowing he was right there. Him seeing things in hindsight in his early 40s is probably hitting him harder now. Hopefully he does get it together.

The fact Bron ended up becoming as great as he was (for as long as he did), and feeling like Bron was initially chasing him, has probably haunted Lenny his whole adult life.

 

[TheNig]

I watched his doc on Showtime some years ago. I'm going to be honest...

Lenny never wanted to hoop. He was just doing it because he was freakishly athletically gifted and because hood nikkas was placing bets on him and breaking him off with some of what they won. I don't think he ever had the mental capacity to sustain a career like LeBron, Melo, or even his homie Noah.

And I thought he was going around the country giving speeches and shyt?

 

[Long Live The Kane]

Yeah I get whatever the inverse of schadenfreude is called whenever I see homie’s frequent and ongoing misfortunes…but i also get the impression that whatever it is allows him to do stuff like this without pride getting in the way, is also part of the reason he never met his potential

 

[FaTaL]

The fact Bron ended up becoming as great as he was (for as long as he did), and feeling like Bron was initially chasing him, has probably haunted Lenny his whole adult life.

It’s too bad he had those injuries, maybe he could rebounded as he got into his late 20s