'We Kept Pushing Each Other,' Says Quinn Cook On Childhood Friendship With Victor Oladipo
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Quinn Cook won an NBA title with the Golden State Warriors, and he was chasing another with the Los Angeles Lakers until coronavirus derailed the NBA season. It's looking increasingly likely that a second championship will have to wait at least another year. The NBA doesn't currently have a plan to resume play.
Cook, at 27 years old, has already scaled the heights of NBA glory. But it was a long and winding road from the basketball courts of Prince George's County, through college and the G League, to the NBA. With the release of the Showtime documentary Basketball County: In The Water, Cook joined Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson on episode 37 of All The Smoke to talk about his journey.
"It was fun," Cook said about growing up in P.G. County. "You had so much to do. Five minutes outside of DC, so you had the city life. It was a lot going on. And I had so much to do. My neighborhood, there were so many hoopers, so many football players. We used to play throwback tackle on the concrete. We'd be out all the time playing one-on-one, 33. It was fun."
But basketball was a cornerstone of life in an area that has seen success in the sport dating back a couple of generations. Hall of Fame forward Adrian Dantley played for DeMatha decades before Cook arrived. All-American Len Bias played his high school basketball at nearby Northwestern.
That talent pipeline extends right up through Cook and beyond. "It means the world, growing up, wanting to be something," said Cook. "For me, I always had K.D. (Kevin Durant) to go see and touch, Jarrett Jack, Nolan Smith, (Michael) Beasley, Jeff Green."
So many of those who succeed in basketball, and in life, have the right people around them along the way. Cook, who grew up in the P.G. County basketball community, was no different. According to Cook, "I just had so much resources to go touch, where anytime I slacked off, was crying or wasn't on my s***, I always had those guys to remind me [that] this is the goal."
His best friend in those formative years was Victor Olidipo, now a rising star with the Indiana Pacers. "We met in fifth grade," Cook remembers. "I got transferred to his school. I didn't have no friends. Literally the first day -- he didn't know me, I didn't know him -- he came up to me... I'm your friend. That's basically how it went the first day of school my fifth-grade year. We played on the same team from fifth grade, for me, until my 11th-grade year, six straight years. We went from elementary school basketball, to middle school basketball to high school basketball. When we got to high school, we went to DeMatha, which was the biggest school in the area. And the lights were on, the lights were bright. Me and him didn't really play a lot our first year. And then we constantly got better, got better. Our second year together, we took the league and the city by storm. And then our third year, it was curtains for everybody. We just ran through the city. We both made first-team All-Met, and we kept pushing each other."
Watch more of Quinn Cook's "All The Smoke" interview on the Showtime Basketball YouTube Channel.
See "Basketball County: In The Water" -- a look into the community that's given rise to dozens of elite basketball players -- on Showtime.
