I knew Cookie's dad had been an NBA player and assumed he had led a privileged childhood, tutored in bb by his father. Not so.
Life with Norm Cook was largely traumatic, heart-wrenching and impossible to comprehend. All Brian knows is the voices that rattled inside his father's head are finally silent. After battling paranoid schizophrenia for 30 years, Norm Cook slipped into a diabetic coma and died last week. He was just 53.
"He pretty much had all the influence on me in the world because I knew if he could make it into the NBA, I could make it into the NBA," Brian said. "I was born with a ball in my crib. I made my first shot when I was 3. My dad was off playing overseas. He'd come back in the summer until he started to get sick and we weren't able to see him again."
When Brian was 5, authorities from a mental hospital took his father away in a straitjacket.
His mother filed for divorce in 1986, working three jobs to feed the family and pay bills.
Quite a story.
