Boys Among Men: How the Prep-to-Pro Generation Redefined the NBA and Sparked a Basketball Revolution

by Jonathan Abrams

  Curry initially found success in New York. He played under Isiah Thomas, who centered his offense around Curry. Curry averaged a career-best 19.5 points and 7 rebounds and scored 43 points in an overtime victory against Milwaukee. “He was like most young players,” Thomas remembered. “He loved to play and hadn’t necessarily gathered the NBA know-how. There is a certain four-, five-, six-year stage that you go through of growth in the NBA where you’re still kind of learning the ropes and having a good time and traveling, meeting people, playing basketball, and having fun. Then, the second stage of that is, ‘OK. I’ve had enough fun. Now I want to win championships and be a part of a championship team and a championship organization.’ ” But Curry soon lost whatever confidence he had gained. The Knicks acquired Zach Randolph in the 2007 off-season and Thomas envisioned merging the two prodigious interior talents into an unstoppable offensive frontcourt. Randolph and Curry, he imagined, would score from either side of the block, and no one offensive player would be able to penetrate the interior with the two big men standing guard in the paint. Instead, Curry and Randolph got in each other’s way on offense. They rarely guarded on defense. Randolph, the slightly better defensive player of the two, claimed most of the minutes. Curry’s minutes became infrequent. “I could never tell with Eddy,” said Donnie Walsh, who became the Knicks’ president after leaving Indiana. “I wanted to think he knew what kind of career he could have and that he was trying to do it. But I can’t give you the answer.” Curry’s on-court struggles soon paled in comparison to his off-the-court financial issues and personal tragedies. Armed burglars tied up Curry and his family and robbed them at their Chicago-area home in 2007. His ex-girlfriend and infant daughter were murdered a year and a half later. “He had a lot of real life-altering things going on, and it was like one after the other,” said Quentin Richardson, his teammate in New York for four seasons. “You could take any of those things and it would be a huge deal, and he had several of them one after another.” A bank began foreclosure proceedings on his Chicago-area home, and Curry was sued multiple times over nonpayment for jewelry and clothing. “Mr. Curry appears to be a very, very generous man,” Donald David, a lawyer for Allstar Capital, who lent money to Curry, told the New York Daily News. “He appears to have taken it upon himself to support every person named Curry on the East Coast.” Curry asked the Knicks for a substantial advance of millions of his salary, despite contributing little on the court midway through a contract that paid him $60 million over six years.

  Ironically, Chandler eventually became the interior defensive player the Knicks badly coveted. He had arrived in New Orleans into the care of Hornets coach Byron Scott after his trade from Chicago. Scott had studied Chandler when Chandler had played in high school. He hardly recognized the player who showed up to practice in New Orleans. “Most people when they first looked at Tyson wanted him to be the next Kevin Garnett, because when he was in high school he was a seven-footer who could make the jump shot,” Scott said. “But when you get to the pros, you have to adjust your game for the betterment of the team, and he was able to do that. He had lost a lot of confidence on the offensive end, but could still get some things done if put in the right situation.” Scott told Chandler that he could and should average a double-double. He called plays for him in the post. Chris Paul, New Orleans’s All-Star point guard, often put Chandler in the right situation by delivering him passes near the basket. Chandler grabbed a career-high 12.4 rebounds and averaged 9.5 points in 2006–2007. He had carved out his niche in the league. He advanced to anchor the Mavericks championship team in 2011, earn a gold medal in London at the 2012 Olympic Games, and was named the NBA Defensive Player of the Year with the Knicks. He found stability in the NBA and in his life, a state that eluded Curry. “I knew Eddy’s career would go one of two ways because of his personality,” Chandler said. “I’m not saying that as a shot by any means because I love Eddy. I still think to this day, Eddy could have been the best big man of our generation. He had all the tools. It was just the circumstances that led him to not pan out to what myself and others had expected of him. But I always thought he had the ability. It was always about work ethic.”

  17.

  A basketball player’s success relies on unflinching confidence. A player who believes he will miss a shot usually misses it. If he hesitates after making one errant shot, that mind-set will infect his next attempts. The best players are confident to the point of cockiness. Basketball players from New York City exemplify that mentality. They don’t just want to win. They have to, as though their masculinity is on the line each time they step onto a court. The city is touted as the mecca of basketball, where outsiders make pilgrimages to see if they can play with the best at famed parks like Rucker and West Fourth Street. The city once clutched that title and reputation rightfully. In its day, it produced some of the finest players ever to play the game, those like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bob Cousy, and Tiny Archibald. In later years, the standing turned ceremonial and reverential. The Knicks last celebrated an NBA championship in 1973. The number of New York schoolyard prodigies who rose from the playground to the NBA likewise dwindled. False prophets came along often. The lights shone brightly and early on any player who developed young in New York. Nearly all stumbled, slipped, and collapsed on their path to greatness. Brooklyn’s Stephon Marbury was the most recent to veer from that path. He flashed signs of dominance as a quick, powerful point guard who could hoist a long jumper with the same ease with which he shot a layup. But that same mentality and conviction that had aided him in his rise to the NBA afflicted him as a professional. He became a malcontent, part of the new class of players seeking to be catered to by organizations and awarded huge contracts before proving worthy of them. Marbury became an All-Star, but also a sizable headache for teams as he ping-ponged around the league. A few years later, Sebastian Telfair, Marbury’s cousin, earned similar acclaim. Telfair was a ballyhooed Brooklyn point guard who signed a large contract with Adidas and became the focal point of a front page New York Times article before ever stepping onto an NBA court. He declared for the 2004 draft out of high school, passing on a commitment to the University of Louisville. The Portland Trail Blazers selected Telfair with the 13th overall selection. But Telfair’s career fell well short of the predicted stardom and he became little more than a journeyman throughout his NBA career. When Portland GM John Nash drafted Telfair, he recalled telling him that because of his diminutive size, he would have to pressure the other point guards on defense and push the ball on offense in order to be successful. Instead, Nash said, Telfair preferred playing in a stationary offense. “He learned pretty quickly he was getting his shot blocked a lot because of his size,” Nash said. “He just wasn’t big enough to go to the basket and deal with big guys. His confidence took a hit after a while.”

  Lenny Cooke was sandwiched between Marbury and Telfair as New York’s next hyped and talented phenom. In the summer of 2000, Cooke arrived at the ABCD camp ranked among high school’s best players. He wanted to depart as the best. “I’m leaving with MVP,” he boasted to Debbie Bortner as he climbed out of her truck at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Players made reputations in New York. They became legends at ABCD. A strong couple of days at the camp could propel a high school player to the same echelon among NBA scouts as two or three solid years playing at a major university, like Duke or North Carolina. The successes among camp graduates, like Kobe Bryant and Tracy McGrady, increased the camp’s mass appeal. If you wanted to be the best, you played against the best and the best came to the ABCD camp. Through the years, the roster did not drastically overshadow the talent Nike lured to its camp. Yet, Nike no longer featured Sonny Vaccaro, who was a siren to the young players as he built relationships and established bonds. “Sonny had a braggadocio about him like he was a prizefighter,” Chris Rivers recalled fondly. “Sonny had no problem telling you what was about to happen. He was a promoter.” Rivers aligned himself with Vaccaro in 1997 after coaching the Oakland Soldiers,
one of the premier AAU teams on the West Coast. His job evolved into forging relationships with players and their families and staying in contact with them throughout the course of the year. Of course, the relationship would be mutual, and the beginning of a link with Adidas would form. Every year, it seemed, the camp featured an epic showdown between prospects who would be in the NBA within a year or two. Shortly after Cooke had made his declaration to Bortner, the camp buzzed about the on-court confrontation between Kwame Brown and Eddy Curry. Only, Rivers could not find Curry the day of the matchup. He banged on hotel door after hotel door, amazed that somehow a teenager as large as Curry could disappear. He finally found Curry, who had overslept in the room of a friend. Curry shrugged off his drowsiness and he and Brown put on the advertised show. “It was the game of the week,” Rivers remembered. “He and Kwame went at it and everybody knew they were going to be some of the top picks in the draft.” Still, Rivers provided a disclaimer to those who came to the camp. “If you’ve got a guy and you think he’s that guy, I will give him the stage to prove it. But the bright lights are too bright for a lot of people.”

  Not for Lenny Cooke. He walked on the courts as though he owned them. At 18, he was older than most of his classmates because of years lost to academic trouble. He was a svelte, 6-foot-6-inch player, stronger, more athletic, and brasher than his opponents. He could attack a defender any way he chose, dropping back to shoot, blowing past him, or simply going through him. He was from New York and played like it at the camp under the watchful eyes of many NBA scouts. The NBA, by then, had dipped a toe into the camp. Not only did the league allow its employees to attend, some assistants and personnel coached at the camp as well. It almost served as a white flag, the league saying, If these high schoolers are going to be in our league soon, we may as well get to know them as early as we can.

  Bill Willoughby knew of Cooke. He was Cooke in a different era, when the expectations to produce, placed on prodigy ballplayers, were not as immediate. His career over, Willoughby still lived nearby in 2000. He enjoyed talking to kids and wanted to provide them with more guidance than he himself had received. He worried that trouble loomed beneath Cooke’s hard exterior. One day at the camp, Willoughby pulled Cooke aside. Already, rumors were circulating that Cooke would jump to the NBA, even though he had a year of high school remaining—two if he attended prep school for a year. “Look, go to St. John’s for a year or two,” Willoughby advised. “Do it like Ron Artest and then come out like that because you’re giving the wrong impression.” Cooke nodded his head. They exchanged phone numbers. Neither remained in frequent contact with the other. Cooke set the camp ablaze, finishing near the top of the 200-plus players, which, for a New York native, meant he was somewhere on his way to being the next Jordan or Dr. J. He was the top player for the first couple of days before striking his right hand on the backboard, an injury that limited him the rest of the way. Cooke even had time to test Kobe Bryant’s restraint. Bryant talked to the kids and, during the session, Cooke confidentially challenged him to a one-on-one game. “When you get to the league, I’ll beat you in various ways,” Bryant answered. “What can you say to a champion and MVP at the time?” Cooke remembered. “There is nothing you can say. After the lecture was over, he knew my name. That made me even more bigheaded, like Kobe knows me. How you know me?” Willoughby called Cooke after still hearing that Cooke wanted to jump straight to the NBA. A man answered and said he was Cooke’s brother and Cooke was not available. Willoughby knew he had the right number. “It was him,” Willoughby said. “He didn’t want to talk to me. He didn’t want to listen.”

  He did not have to. Cooke was the best, and he was ticketed for stardom. He dominated future NBA All-Stars like Amar’e Stoudemire, Carmelo Anthony, and Joakim Noah, his onetime AAU teammate. They emulated Cooke, wanting to be him.

  Cooke would never play a second in the NBA.

  •••

  The first time Debbie Bortner met Lenny Cooke, he wore a flimsy spring jacket in the middle of winter’s cold. The wind ruffled the jacket, causing the already short sleeves to ride even higher on his arms. Bortner would soon find the rest of Cooke’s background harrowing. He had grown up in Atlantic City and relocated with his family to a neglected corner of Brooklyn. There, in Bushwick, the family lived near a cemetery on Decatur Street on the second floor of a wooden building frequented by rats and warmed by an oven. The building would be condemned within the next couple of years. Gunshots occasionally stirred Cooke from his sleep at night. He dodged the prostitutes and drug dealers on his way to school or—more often than not—en route to the park to hang out with friends. Bortner still found Cooke likable and always quick with a smile. Initial impressions meant a lot to her. She was bold and opinionated. No one had to guess what was on her mind. She let everyone know. Her husband, Ken, ran a successful newspaper-insert printing business, eventually selling it to Rupert Murdoch. With time and money, Bortner launched herself into her children’s activities. She managed and helped coach her son, Brian Raimondi, in AAU for the Panthers of Long Island. Bortner was an unusual sight in amateur basketball, a white woman whose blond ponytail followed her up and down the sidelines. Someone had spotted Cooke one day shooting baskets in the playground and asked him to try out for the team. That day, Tyrone Green, one of the team’s coaches, bluntly told the players that the chances of anyone making the roster were slim. You don’t even know me, you’ve never seen me play basketball before, how do you know I’m not good enough to make your team? Cooke thought. It was a slight and, for a New York player, a slight fueled motivation. Cooke impressed everyone at the tryouts—while wearing Hush Puppies—and soon dominated the team. Cooke came to appreciate Brian Raimondi as a little brother. They became inseparable and Cooke transferred from a high school he hardly attended to join Raimondi at La Salle Academy, a private school in Manhattan. Others soon started noticing Cooke’s game. “That’s when I really took advantage of it, knowing I was talented enough to play against some of the top players in the country,” Cooke remembered.

  He took advantage of everything he could. The hour did not matter. New York never slept and seldom did Cooke. He could always find a party or club that would lift its rope, open its doors, and allow him inside a world of temptation. He hung out with athletes and rappers, as though they were peers with matching bank accounts. “The things men were doing, I was doing at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old,” Cooke recalled. “I was in the club at four and five in the morning while y’all was getting ready for school the next day. I never thought it was going to end.” The more he partied, the less school became a priority and his faltering grades plummeted further. Cooke often plopped his head on a desk and tried for a couple hours of sleep on the rare occasions he did attend class. “Everybody was in line to give him shit,” Bortner recalled. “Sneakers, clothes. Everybody did.” Cooke, she believed, was a well-meaning kid who could go places if he kept his head on straight. New York could blind anyone, especially an impressionable teenager who had come from nothing overnight. Cooke, sensing the same, asked Bortner if he could move into their house in New Jersey’s Old Tappan. Cooke’s parents, Alfreda and Vernon Hendrix, planned to move to Virginia with his three younger siblings. Cooke worried about being out of sight, out of mind and that his ranking would drop if he left New York.

  He also desperately needed an education. Cooke had been promoted annually up until high school. His previous schools had passed him on and he became someone else’s to neglect for that school year. The automatic promotions stopped in high school. Cooke’s woeful grades forced him to be held back twice in four years. He thought he had been learning, despite his frequent absences, only to now realize that he would not come close to qualifying for college. He thought of becoming a millionaire every day, of being like Magic Johnson, a basketball legend and entrepreneur, and building a movie theater where his former home, now boarded up, stood in Brooklyn. Yet, he could barely read. Bortner agreed to the move. She had done it befor
e, allowing her son’s teammates extended stays at her home. She promised Cooke’s mother that she would watch over Cooke as though he were one of her own children. The plan would be for Cooke to fully extricate himself from the city. Cooke and Raimondi transferred to Northern Valley Regional High School at Old Tappan. Cooke drew so many college scouts whenever he played that Bortner hoped some of their eyes would also land on her son.