Every player wants to hear his name announced by Adam Silver or Mark Tatum on draft night, but when Charles Cooke went unselected June 22, it didn’t take long for NBA teams to start contacting him. After showing steady improvement during a four-year college career split between James Madison and Dayton, Cooke was considered a viable second-round option – NBADraft.net listed him 61st on its pre-draft Big Board, while CBS ranked him 64th. Sixty players are picked in the annual two-round draft.
“He was one of those guys everyone had on their radar, but it was such a deep draft, he kind of slipped through the cracks,” said New Orleans Director of Player Personnel David Booth, who followed Cooke’s college career closely.