Mary High School basketball game in the early 2000s. Instead of fouling, James stole the ball from Cooke, scored on a fast break and won the game, leaving the camp with MVP honors. In the final seconds of the game, Cooke's team was up by 1 point and had the ball. He was slotted ahead of Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire in the high school rankings. Cooke was the headline player, averaging 25 points, 10 rebounds, two steals and two blocks per game during his junior year at Northern Valley High School in New Jersey. Trigonis and Bossi remember James and Lenny Cooke going head-to-head the following summer in 2001 at the Adidas ABCD camp and say that's when things started to shift for James. "Obviously not to the extend that he was a household name yet, but he was on my radar and I had to find a way to see this kid play at some point." "I thought, 'OK, this guy is going to be pretty big-time,' " Bossi told Yahoo Sports. That same summer, Eric Bossi, 247 Sports' national basketball recruiting director, was starting his career as a basketball recruiting analyst and was doing some research on the high school state tournament in Ohio and came across James. It wasn't until afterwards when I heard the name for the first time, LeBron James." "He probably had 20-plus points and they smoked us in the second half and they ended up winning the game. "I was kind of surprised thinking, ‘Who the hell is this guy?’ " Trigonis told Yahoo Sports. The game completely changed with this young player falling out of bounds making shots, driving the lane then dunking on people and hitting deep 3-pointers. It wasn't until the second half when the Soldiers started playing a kid Trigonis had never seen before. Belmont Shore had a comfortable lead at halftime, up 15 points.
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