Raise your hand if you’re in the NBA. Not so fast Lenny Cooke

More and more, high school basketball players are forgoing college for the glitter and glamour of the professional game

Colin Donohue / Managing Editor

Lenny Cooke knew he had solidified a spot in the NBA draft. He could smell the guaranteed money of being a lottery pick. He had averaged 25 points, 10 rebounds, six assists, two steals and two blocks per game in his junior year … of high school. In his senior year, the 6-foot, 6-inch, 206-pound guard averaged 31.5 points a game over the first eight games, but after turning 19, he was athletically ineligible according to high school athletics’ rules in his home county in New Jersey.

Sure, he had offers to play for North Carolina, Seton Hall, St. John’s, Miami and Ohio State. But millions of dollars speaks louder than a professor at a lectern. So, he declared himself eligible for the draft in 2002.

Cooke went undrafted.

The trajectory of his basketball career had peaked in his junior year of high school. Since going undrafted, his career has flat lined. After all 32 NBA teams passed on Cooke in both rounds, he joined the Rucker Park Summer League in New York, playing for the Terror Squad team.

In the same year, he was drafted by the Columbus Riverdragons of the NBDL, the NBA’s proving grounds for those unable to cut it in the big league. Cooke tried out for the Brevard Blue Ducks of the USBL in April of 2003, then was signed in May by the Brooklyn Kings, also of the USBL. In 15 games, he averaged a staggering 28.8 points a game and a little more than nine rebounds.

Later that year, he was back in the Rucker Park Summer League. Then, he found himself playing in the Pilipino Professional Basketball Association for the Purefoods TJ Hot Dogs. Cooke signed with the Shanghai Dongfang Sharks in December of 2003, where he averaged 16.7 points and close to seven rebounds a game. In 2004, he was back with the TJ Hot Dogs. By March, they had release him.

For every Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant and Lebron James, there is a Cooke, a Leon Smith, a Korleone Young. The big money and an unfathomable disdain for education force many young players to skip over college for the glitter and stardom of the NBA. Garnett, Bryant and James are anomalies. For Garnett and Bryant, it took a year to get acclimated to the league. For James, it seems to have taken no time at all.

For players like Jermaine O’Neal and Tracy McGrady, it’s different. It took O’Neal five years of warming the Portland Trailblazers’ bench before he figured out how to play in the NBA. McGrady spent three years sitting on Toronto’s bench before developing into a superstar.

Washington’s Kwame Brown and Chicago’s Eddy Curry and Tyson Chandler – all with three years professional experience – still haven’t figured it out.

The NBA draft needs an age limit. No player should be allowed to enter the draft until he is 20 years old. That covers at least one and at most two years of college basketball. They need to go, if nothing else, for the maturation process. O’Neal and McGrady both could’ve played at least one year of college ball – à la Stephon Marbury and Carmelo Anthony – and become big-time players sooner.

Understandably, forcing kids to play college basketball would seemingly turn collegiate programs into the NBA’s minor league system. But the ends would justify the means. Right now, if a player isn’t considering the NBA out of high school or after one year of college, he might as well consider his professional dreams dashed.

Recently, Shaun Livingston and J.R. Smith declared themselves eligible for the NBA draft, Livingston turning down Duke and Smith turning down North Carolina for the pros. Add to the list Sebastian Telfair, Josh Smith, Peter John Ramos, Dwight Howard and Al Jefferson. That’s seven of the 24 underclassmen trying to earn an NBA roster spot. Some of them won’t make it. And when they aren’t drafted, how many will go to college, get an education and start a career? If history is any indication, the answer is an emphatic zero.

At this rate, the NBA will continue to devolve. For each veteran that retires, there’s an 18- or 19-year-old waiting in the wings to replace him. Soon enough, a 21-year-old entering the league will be considered old. And what’s to come of college basketball? Who’s to say?

Not Cooke. He never got the chance to play.

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The Cleveland Cavaliers’ Lebron James (23) and the Washington Wizards’ Kwame Brown (5) both jumped straight from high school to the NBA. James, in his first year as a pro, garnered Rookie of the Year honors. An anomaly in the mold of Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant, James had a successful rookie campaign. Brown, though, has been a bust in his three years in the NBA, struggling to maintain consistent play.