There
are always more prospective players in the NBA draft than available roster
spots. Most have some sort of reputation from college, yet the Knicks have a
history of blind-siding us with baffling picks. Yes, the Frederic Weis debacle
was fourteen years ago, but we’re still not ready to let it go. The point is,
many players who have always been told how special they are still find
themselves out of the money every year.
Lenny Cooke is exhibit A. Although
once the number one ranked high school player in the country, his NBA career
never happened. Viewers will see his
hoop dreams implode in Josh & Bennie Safdie’s Lenny Cooke (trailer
here), which
is now playing in New York.
Even
before his senior year of high school, everyone assumed Cooke was bound for NBA
glory. Cooke had even moved out of his urban neighborhood into the home of an
exurban patron, to protect his future greatness. (That right there begs a host
of questions, like why open your home to an athlete everyone predicts will soon
be wealthy, instead of an exceptional young scholar or a gifted musician? Just
hold those thoughts for now.) Regardless, Cooke’s pro career was considered
predestined, especially by Cooke.
Around
the time Cooke was seriously considering his options (college versus heading
straight into the NBA draft), Adam Shopkorn was allowed intimate access to
Cooke for a documentary about the future superstar in the making. He was there to capture the moment when Cooke
and friends watched a record number of high school students get snapped up high
in the draft. He was also there for what
in retrospect becomes the turning point in Cooke’s life. At one of the more high profile high school
showcase tournaments, Cooke basically stinks up the joint, but not a certain
future NBA all-star.
If
you are having trouble understanding why you should care about someone who
probably could have had a full ride scholarship to any Division I school but
got burned trying to take a shortcut to the pros, don’t expect me to convince
you otherwise. Cooke’s story is not a
tragedy, it is a cautionary tale. The
long and the short of it is he believed his own hype. Granted, he had some terrible advice from
people who did not have his best interests at heart, but that is so blatantly
obvious, you have to wonder what he was thinking. Timing was not on his side either, entering
the draft amidst the backlash against high school players. Yet, Cooke fully realizes, perhaps even more
than the Safdie Brothers, he is fully responsible for his bad decisions.
Potentially,
there is a lot of drama and pathos to this story. The problem is, both the young entitled Cooke
and the older disillusioned and out of shape Cooke are rather passive,
inarticulate presences on-screen.
Despite all the humiliations the audience witnesses, they never get much
of a sense of his personality. The
Safdies try to open up his head in the gimmicky final scene, in which today’s
Cooke tries to give his younger self a good talking to through the magic of
digital post, but it just means he is self-aware regarding his flaws and
mistakes.