Star-That-Be: Who Never Was

Eclipsed Early On

The first time Adam Shopkorn read about Lenny Cooke, he could not shake the feeling that Cooke’s story had a big-screen, sequel-like quality, “Hoop Dreams” for the 21st century. Given the widespread raves for his all-around game, Cooke – unlike the popular 1994 documentary that followed two young Chicago players – seemed far more likely to end with a pot of N.B.A. gold. Shopkorn, in his early 20s, quit his job with a Manhattan filmmaker and hauled his equipment up to Old Tappan, N.J., where Cooke, an African-American, was starring for the local public school while living with a wealthy white family. In that regard, the cinematic appeal was more “The Blind Side” than “Hoop Dreams.”

Four years earlier, Cooke had befriended a teammate, Brian Raimondi, on an Amateur Athletic Union team called the Panthers. Raimondi’s mother, Debbie Bortner, helped manage the squad. Cooke had only recently begun playing organized ball but was already more than 6 feet tall and quickly became the talk of the circuit. The Panthers happened to have one future N.B.A. multimillionaire on their roster, but Joakim Noah, now of the Chicago Bulls, was only 5-9 on the way to 6-11 and completely in awe of Cooke.

“I was a 13-year-old French kid from Paris, and all of a sudden, I met Lenny and was watching him play in all of these tournaments,” said Noah, the son of the French tennis star Yannick Noah, whose mother had moved him to Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan. “He was really my hero because the way he could dominate a game was unbelievable to me.”

Cooke began high school at Franklin K. Lane in Brooklyn and transferred to La Salle Academy in Manhattan to play with Raimondi. By junior year, with Cooke struggling academically, they hatched a plan to become teammates in Old Tappan.

While Raimondi nursed a broken wrist, Cooke was dominating the suburban competition when Shopkorn arrived to make his documentary pitch. 

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