Cynthia Lynne Cooper, is now 48, was born in Chicago, Ill. Her mother was left with Cynthia and her seven siblings to raise alone after the father left the family. The Cooper family relocated to South Central Los Angeles. The flash point, for the 1995 Rodney King Riots. Despite less then stellar odds. Cooper excelled in basketball. Cynthia Cooper played basketball, Locke High School. In addition to basketball, she excelled at field and track too. She was named Los Angeles Player of the year. Cynthia was selected by the college sports powerhouse, The University of Southern California, (USC). Cynthia blossomed as a player, and an outstanding student, and overall inspiration to her peers. Cynthia Cooper had an impressive International Basketball career as well. She played in Spain for the Samoa Betera from 1986 to 1987. She played in Italy for two teams. The first was Parma from 1987 to 1997 and for Alcamo from 1994 to 1996. In Spain, Cynthia Cooper, was leading league scorer. In the ten years she played in Italy, she was the leading league scorer eight times and came in second place the other two years. In 1987 she was awarded the MVP award of the European All Star Team. She was also selected to the Italian All Start team 96 to 1997Cooper was a four year letter winning guard at USC from 1982 to 1986. Her record at USC was 114-15. Cooper won a gold medal in the Olympics as part of the women’s basketball team in 1988 and a bronze medal in 1992. She played for the WNBA team the Huston Comets from 1997 to 2003. Many consider her to be the greatest women’s basketball player. In 2011 she received the distinction as being voted by the fans as one of top 15 players in WNBA history.You thought this was good? Brace yourself: Former Comets lead list of WNBA’s Top 15 players ever