A heartfelt tribute to my childhood hero Norm Cook. A high school All-American from Lincoln, Illinois, Cook starred at KU from 1973-76 and later was a first-round draft pick by the Boston Celtics after going pro after his junior season. Cook played in 27 games for the Celtics and Denver Nuggets from 1976-78. After battling paranoid schizophrenia for most of his adult life, Cook died at age 53 on Dec. 22, 2008.
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It was a night to remember for Norm Cook, and one that is indelibly etched in Jayhawk lore. Playing his first game at KU against Murray State on Dec. 1, 1973 in Allen Fieldhouse, all the bright-eyed 6-9 freshman forward did was go 10 for 10 from the field for 21 points while also grabbing nine rebounds.
A star was born.
“I wasn’t even thinking about it. I was a little nervous before the game, but I forgot about it,” Cook told the Lawrence Journal-World afterwards.
His dazzling and commanding performance left fans, teammates and the media all gushing.
“Cook is the quick, big talented forward with finesse who can shoot, rebound, assist, block shots, can do it all, to be brief. He has all it takes to be a superstar by the time his four KU seasons are wrapped up,” Journal-World columnist Bill Mayer wrote.
Cook’s 10 shots without a miss in a game is still a KU record (tied with Danny Manning), and his 21 points were the most by a Kansas freshman in his debut game since Xavier Henry broke the mark with 27 points in his first contest as a Jayhawk in 2009.
Cook was an instrumental reason why KU made the Final Four that 1973-74 dream season; the Jayhawks finished with a 23-7 record, a dramatic turnaround from the previous season’s 8-18 mark. With Cook starting from day one, he earned Big Eight Freshman of the Year honors, averaging 11.4 points and 6.5 rebounds per game. He led KU in scoring three games and tied for team lead in another, while pacing the ‘Hawks in rebounding seven contests and tying for team high in an eighth game.
Cook had 11 points and seven rebounds in KU’s 55-54 victory over Creighton in the NCAA Tournament opening round while posting 10 points and seven rebounds in KU’s 93-90 overtime win against Oral Roberts in the Midwest Regional Finals.
While his scoring average dipped to 10.3 points as a sophomore and field goal percentage slipped from 49.5 percent his freshman season to 44.4 percent, Cook averaged a team-high 8.2 rebounds while blocking 35 shots (No. 2 on team) and helping lead KU to its second-straight NCAA Tournament in 1975, where the Jayhawks lost to Notre Dame and star player Adrian Dantley in the first round.
Cook was rewarded for his efforts by being named to the U.S. Pan Am Games team that summer in Mexico City, where he shined under Washington head coach Marv Harshman. Playing with future NBA Hall of Famer Robert Parish and All-Star Otis Birdsong, Cook was USA’s gold-medal winning team’s (9-0) fourth-leading scorer at 10.8 points per game, ranked third in rebounding, tied for second in assists, and ranked second in free throws made. He exploded for 24 points in the United States’ opening-game 102-63 blowout over Argentina.
While Cook was creating a buzz with his game in Mexico, he was also toying with the idea of turning pro. The Utah Stars and one other ABA team wooed him with offers to jump to the league and forgo his final two years at Kansas. In the Oct. 28, 1975 issue of The Spokesman-Review, it was reported that Cook had a four-year contract offer worth $150,000.
Cook spoke to Harshman about his situation during the Pan Am Games.
“Norm is one of nine kids. He talked it over with me for quite awhile,” Harshman told The Spokesman-Review. “I couldn’t advise him not to take the money. Finally, he said, ‘I’m gonna go back to Kansas and then I’m gonna play in the 1976 Olympics.’”
Cook had a career year as a junior, averaging a team-best 14.8 points and 7.9 rebounds as a co-captain while earning first-team All-Big Eight honors. He, though, could not carry KU alone as the Jayhawks stumbled to a 13-13 record.
After three marvelous years, Cook declared as a hardship case for the NBA Draft. He concluded his career with 1,004 points and 624 rebounds in 83 games. Cook, who wasn’t selected for the Olympics, currently ranks No. 60 all time at KU in career scoring and No. 25 in career rebounding.
The NBA champion Boston Celtics, who coveted Cook since seeing him star at the Pan Am Games, selected the former KU standout with the No. 16 overall pick in the first round in the 1976 NBA Draft, seven spots higher than future Hall of Famer Alex English of South Carolina.
Celtics head coach Tommy Heinsohn was thrilled to get his man.
‘‘He’s a shooter, a scorer,” Heinsohn told the Associated Press on June 9, 1976. “He's a good, quick forward, and a pure forward. We had a chance at the same time to draft Earl Tatum of Marquette, who is also a scorer. But Cook is bigger and more fundamental. He played at a school that uses a slowdown offense, but Jo Jo White learned under the same coach and he adjusted quite well.”
Indeed, White did. White, Boston’s first-round draft pick in 1969, was an All-Star and had just earned MVP of the NBA Finals.
The AP story reported that “assistant Coach John Killilea said Cook was wooed last summer by two American Basketball Association clubs, but the Celtics apparently convinced the 6-foot-9, 210-pound forward to stay in school another year.”
“I don’t say we were the ones who convinced him not to sign," Killilea said. “But both Jo Jo and I urged him to stay in school another year, to better prepare himself, to mature a little more. We kept telling him that if he didn't sign, he stood a good chance of being drafted high in the NBA this year.”
That chance had now become reality.
“What we wanted was somebody who could put the ball in the hole,” Heinsohn said. “With (Don) Nelson retiring and not knowing what to expect at this point out of (John) Havlicek, he's the kind of player we need.”
Two months later as the Celtics were preparing to open rookie camp, Heinsohn was still excited about his top draft pick. In an Aug. 18th UPI story, the wire service reported that “the enigma is Tom Boswell, last year’s top draft choice. Heinsohn swears Boswell is not another Steve Downing, that he does have special talent and that he will round into a tough cornerman. However, the Celtics picked up many of the same qualities in 1976 top choice Norm Cook of Kansas. He comes recommended by White, a former star at Kansas who has seen him several times, and by Providence coach Dave Gavitt, who called Cook the best player in the 1975 Pan American Games. Heinsohn also has seen Cook twice and likes him very much.”
Cook seemed poised to have an impressive rookie season. However, dreams die hard as Cook barely played in 1976-77, averaging just 2.5 points and 5.5 minutes in 25 games. In the 1978 edition of The Complete Handbook of Pro Basketball, here’s how one writer labeled Cook’s performance that season:
“Still another first-round pick that’s fizzled. Played pattern ball at Kansas where his career average was only 12.1 and never caught onto the running game at Boston. Loves to shoot, but never knew when to pass. A member of the All-Bench team after logging exactly 125 minutes in an injury-free season. Impressed Celtic scout John Killilea when he was named MVP in Pan Am Games. Has a reputation as a shooter, but made only 37 percent. Also, his attitude was not the best. Will never make All-Practice team and sometimes loses track of time. Doesn’t seem to have the desire to succeed.”
I was devastated when I first read those words about 40 years ago. Norm was my childhood hero; I put him on a pedestal, and he could do no wrong. I thought he was destined for great success in the NBA. Instead, he was labeled as a bust who would go down as one of the worst first-round picks in Celtics history.
Cook, who scored four points (2-2 FG) in three minutes in his lone playoff game with Boston, was cut by the Celtics after his rookie season. He was then signed by the Denver Nuggets and head coach Larry Brown on April 7 the following season in 1978, playing just two games before being released four days later.
And that was it. His NBA career was suddenly over. In 27 games with Boston and Denver, Cook averaged 2.4 points and 1.1 rebounds in 5.5 minutes per contest, while shooting 37.3 percent from the field and 52.9 percent at the free throw line. He totaled 65 points, 30 rebounds, 10 steals, six assists and 148 minutes.
Cook next played briefly overseas and then settled back in his hometown of Lincoln, Illinois, where he married and had children, including a son named Brian, who would become a standout 6-10 forward at Illinois and first-round draft pick by the Los Angeles Lakers in 2003 and nine-year NBA player.
When I think of Norm Cook these days --- and I do pretty much every day -- it is with a mixture of sadness and joy. I am saddened that he died too soon at age 53 and pained that his life was destroyed by mental illness; he battled paranoid schizophrenia most of his adult years and suffered alone until his death after slipping into a diabetic coma. Perhaps the first signs of his mental illness came when he played for Denver, telling his teammates that he thought someone was following him.
I cried that December night in 2008 when I read about Norm’s death. It was tears of a life cut much too short, tears of what my childhood hero had meant to me growing up as an impressional boy in Lawrence, and tears of all the years Norm battled with his devastating illness.
While I’m sad about what happened to Norm shortly after leaving KU, I try to choose to remember the joy and great times I had watching him play in Allen Fieldhouse as a kid and living out my childhood dreams while I attended games with my dad. I can still close my eyes and see him swish his patented 18-foot jump shot from the baseline by the KU bench, sweet memories that I’ll hold on forever.
I’d like to think, after so much pain, he’s finally at peace, free at last. As his Final Four teammate Roger Morningstar told me after Norm died, his old friend no longer has to fight his demons.
“This is God’s way of helping him,” Brian Cook told the Orlando Sentinel on Dec. 31, 2008 after his dad’s funeral. “He doesn’t have any worries anymore. He doesn’t have any schizophrenic episodes or paranoia.”
“I’m not saying I don’t want him here now ... but he’s in a better place,” Brian added. “He’s in his right mind now.”
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I interviewed Morningstar in 2001 and Cook’s former KU teammate Dale Greenlee in 2009 about their thoughts and memories of Norm. Here is what they told me.
“We just saw about every day in the papers around the town of Olney (Illinois, where Morningstar starred in junior college) what Norman Cook and what Lincoln (Community High School) had done,” Morningstar said. “They had a great team (30-1 in 1972-73, one of the best squads in Illinois prep history). He was just killing people (22.8 ppg, 11.8 rpg, high school All-American, one of top 15 players in the country by Street and Smith Magazine). He was extremely talented, very quiet and aloof, Norman. Very soft spoken. Never got jacked up too much emotionally, just kind of showed up and played. I’d say he was more sensitive than not. Any time you’re out on the floor swinging elbows and trying to compete, you can’t be too sensitive to do that kind of thing. Norman again was very quiet. He was close to his mom. He dad was actually murdered when he was young -- when he lived up in Chicago. He was a good, kind, good kid. Great player.
“He’s had more problems on the mental illness side that’s caused him to do the things that would put him in jail from time to time. Never been a hard-core criminal. He’s got a terrible case of schizophrenia. He’s never been the same. Norman had a brother who played at Duke. There’s some athletic talent in his family. It’s heartbreaking to see what has happened to him. I don’t think it’s getting any better actually. I think it’s getting a little bit worse. It’s impossible to communicate with him. We all feel bad about the circumstances, but that’s kind of the way it is. The last time I spoke to him was the 100-year anniversary that Roy (Williams) did here (in 1998). I was in charge of getting our team back here since I’m local and around. I sent off a bunch of stuff and called him. I got a return call. It was a little mysterious. It was after the event had happened, and it was Norman. It was a little bizarre, but he at least was talking and kind of knew what was up. He was actually out--he’s been in and out--in Illinois, they call it the state hospital. I guess it would be something similar to Menninger over here in Topeka. This was during the time period when he was actually out. To be real honest, I haven’t heard over the last eight or nine months, whether Norm’s in and out or how he’s doing.”
And then there were Greenlee’s recollections.
“Norman was probably one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet,” Greenlee said. “Norman was a quiet, when you first meet him, he was a very quiet unassuming person. And for him to have that tremendous talent and be so unassuming was really amazing. It would be amazing now, but really even amazing back then. No bravado with Norm, no I’m the best. Six-nine, could shoot from 20-feet out, obviously first-round draft choice of the Boston Celtics. A lot of us would be kind of full of themselves if they had that kind of ability, but Norman really wasn’t. He was a very, very regular guy; he had kind of a quiet, unassuming person for having that kind of God-given talent.”
Greenlee said Cook and the Jayhawk players were quite close.
“We all lived in Jayhawk Towers. We lived together, we practiced together, the lives were really closely intertwined,” Greenlee said. “He played bass, he had a bass guitar. To the consternation of some of his roommates, he played maybe later at night than we wanted. Again, a good person. He was not when many people went pro early, Norman left after his junior year. Kind of the tragedy of that, he may have needed one more year of maturity. If he stayed at Kansas one more year, he needed that kind of big brother, someone to guide him and did not have that at that point of time. That’s why the unfortunate things happen, but just a tremendous talent. We were blessed to know Norman.”
Greenlee related that mourners at Cook’s funeral shared “similar stories” about what a good, quality, genuine and humble person he was.
“Guys that he had grown up with, they would talk about going fishing with Norm, playing ball with Norm, and just kind of hanging out,” Greenlee said. “Again, their comments were very similar in that he was not looking to be the spotlight, he wasn’t looking to be the focal point. Would help you if you needed some help to do whatever, but he really wasn’t full of himself, and that’s a quality, boy we all should take every day.”
Greenlee said people at the funeral also talked about Cook’s mental illness.
“Unfortunately Norman had some mental challenges and had tried to work through some of those. We all have demons in our lives, and unfortunately some are greater than others, and some are attacked in different ways,” Greenlee said. “Every person who got up and spoke, he had some relatives and friends, coach (Duncan, Cook’s high school coach and then his assistant coach at Kansas) Reid got up and gave a wonderful, wonderful talk at the funeral. He talked about Norman as a high school player. Duncan would take him to the gym, and he would work for hours on footwork. He was talented, but there were things he needed to develop, and Norman would do whatever he said. Coach Reid came to Kansas with Norman, he knew him probably the best of those with us during the Kansas years. Norman was a people pleaser, a good person and he expressed the sadness that obviously Norman had passed at such an early age. When you pass away in your 50s, that’s certainly very short in today’s life span.”
Cook’s fabulous debut KU game was a also a topic of conversation at the funeral.
“(We) talked about that. Here he is, first college game, goes 10 for 10 and scores 20 (21) points,” Greenlee said. “None of the rest of us ever had a game like that in our lives at any level. Unless you go 2 for 2, I had some games when I didn’t miss but I didn’t shoot much. To have such an impact as a freshman and to step in at the University of Kansas was tremendous. After the game as I recall, it was a ball game, he wasn’t crowing about what a wonderful game. I had 11 rebounds I think against Kansas State one year and I was telling everybody about it. I said, ‘Man did you look? I’m a guard, I had 11 rebounds.’ I was calling people at home, ‘Did you look at that box score?’ Norman goes 10 for 10 and he really wasn’t trying to make a big deal out of it.
“I remember just Norman having such a great first game,” Greenlee added. “But he had a lot of good games. He’d get 18 points and 12 rebounds. Back then, people didn’t really talk about double-doubles like they talk about them now. You could count on Norman to go out and play hard every night. I remember he had a great first step, first dribble. I can almost picture it now, catching the ball on the wing, giving a little look and then just one dribble and either pulling up and shoot a jumper or potentially go all the way to the basket. He was so long at 6-8 or 6-9.”
Greenlee, Morningstar, and all those people who knew and loved Cook can remain comforted in the fond memories they shared with him. For me, I know my childhood hero will always be a part of me.
To Norman Cook: It’s been 10 years since you passed and 45 years since I first saw you shoot a jumper in the Phog as a wonder-eyed 7-year-old. Thanks for the memories you gave me growing up in Lawrence and watching you play. You gave me so much happiness and helped make my childhood brighter. I will never forget you!
