Lenny Cooke

Leonard Cooke (born April 29, 1982) is an American former professional basketball player. Born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, he is known primarily for having been ranked higher than LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony in 2001. He had averaged 25 points, 10 rebounds, two steals, and two blocks per game in his junior year of high school. Following his junior year in high school, he averaged 31.5 points for the first eight games of his senior year. When he turned 19 in 2001, he was academically ineligible to play according to high school athletics' rules in his home county in New Jersey. Cooke is the subject of the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival selected documentary film Lenny Cooke by the Safdie Brothers. Early life Cooke was born to Vernon and Alfreda Hendrix (née Cooke): his mother gave birth to him before marrying, so he carried her maiden last name. Cooke has three younger siblings, brothers Vernon and Darius and sister Tierra. Cooke's mother worked as a dealer at the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and he attended middle school there; the family later moved to Bushwick, a neighborhood of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, where they lived in a poverty-stricken block. Cooke's parents struggled to find employment, and the family lived in poor conditions: they could not afford to pay for heating, so that they had to use boiled water and an open oven to warm their house during winter.