Never knew about Lenny's car accident. Kind of a weird coincidence with a Steve Lavin angle included:
Steve's last recruit at UCLA was a skinny 6'8 forward named Sean Phaler. And Sean owed his UCLA scholarship in part to a meeting with Lenny Cooke. The place was the Rebok Big Time Tourney - at the time the largest AAU tourney in the country. Both Lenny Cooke and Sean Phaler would go on to be two-time "All-Tourney" performers. But in the 2001 tourney, junior Phaler was matched up with the Senior Cooke - and the underdog soCal boys embarrassed the much higher ranked New York squad, as Phaler dismantled Cooke, and set the (then) tourney single game scoring record with 45 pts (on 18-22 shooting).
The coincidence? It's why you likely never heard of Sean "Bones" Phaler. Steve left UCLA, and Ben Howland thought the (by then) 6'9 175 lb forward was too light to play his defensive schemes - so he released Sean from his LOI. Sean then took a grant-in-aid from his Dad's alma mater, New Mexico. But that Summer, a couple weeks before heading to New Mexico for the start of his college career, Sean was in an horrific traffic accident - his mustang was totaled, it took 2 hours for rescue crews to extricate him from the wreckage. Among the many injuries he sustained was a broken back.
Incredibly, he DID come back to play college basketball after sitting out a medical redshirt season, but he was never the same player. Lost his flexibilty, quickness, hops, and stamina to the injuries. Played 2 years at New Mexico, then a year at a JC (he contributed to a state title/undeated season), then finished off at UNC Charlotte.
Weird that both players careers were impacted by traffic accidents.