Mayar Zokaei Comments can be sent to mzokaei@media.ucla.edu.

I vividly remember the October day that I took the first step toward playing organized sports. I wasn’t good enough to play for my high school’s junior varsity team and I was only a freshman, so signing up to play in my local park’s youth basketball league was the next best thing.



I don’t remember the names of more than three guys on my team. I don’t even remember what number I donned that season. But one image will forever remain entrenched in my memory: the sight of Jason, Freddie and John in the stands at our games.

This isn’t a story of three has-been foes. This is a tale of three never-were teammates.

All three lived in the inner city and their parents didn’t have cars, so they couldn’t be there that Saturday morning to sign up for a team. But the following Monday, Jason’s mom managed to come with him on the school bus and walk the two miles from our school to the park office. There she was told the league didn’t have enough coaches. Jason couldn’t play because there was no more room.

Jason, Freddie and John no longer came to my games. Their parents didn’t want them catching the late bus home and it was too difficult for them to sit in the stands watching.

I made a decision to one day become that extra coach.

Fast forward to 2001 and my third season of coaching basketball. My experiences as a coach at Woodland Hills Park have afforded me many opportunities to learn and to grow.

My team of 13, 14 and 15-year-olds, The Lakers, is pretty close to their dysfunctional professional counterpart.

Seena is my Shaq, Jeremy is my Kobe and in the lead role of Phil Jackson, there’s yours truly.

We won our first game by 30, but as the NBA Lakers have shown, success breeds jealousy and disdain.

“Tell Jeremy to stop ball-hogging when he brings the ball up,” Seena said to me in a telephone conversation after our first loss, in which he managed only 19 points, all in the first half.

“Seena sucks on defense and he never passes the ball when he’s triple-teamed,” Jeremy said.

Ahh, so refreshing. Experiencing the trials and tribulations of Coach Jackson without the jet lag and bad hotel food – what a great experience.

We improved our record to 3-1 by trouncing lesser teams, but the second win revealed the gaping hole that would soon become our demise. This wasn’t a T-E-A-M. It was two I’s and not much in the middle. Seena does an outstanding imitation of Shaq with a jumper, and Jeremy does a great impression of Kobe with no jumper.

And much like Shaq and Kobe, I’m not sure if they’re really friends off the court. At least not lately.

The Los Angeles Lakers have become the laughingstock of the NBA. How can a team with two bonafide stars evaporate like stardust? The egos, the selfishness and greed that conjures the environment in the Lakers’ locker room now look like they are there to stay.

If there was ever a better time to make an impression and have someone change for the good, adolescence is the best time. If Shaq and Kobe had good influences as kids and good coaches while in the infant stages of their basketball careers, there is a strong possibility we would not be stuck in this debacle that is our championship basketball team.

This is why I think coaching sports, any sport, should become a universal requirement, especially in college.

For one thing, it prepares one for life as a parent. If you find a way for other parents’ kids to listen to you and collaborate with other kids, then getting your son and daughter to share a bedroom will be a cinch.

Want to prepare yourself to remain optimistic at all times? Coach against a team full of trees when you have a guy on the court who’s 4-foot-5.

Interested in a career in law? Leave town for a weekend and have your star player yell at the girl on your team and subsequently have her father allegedly call the kid’s house to threaten him.

Medical profession? Try to examine why your star player in the summer throws up twice after running back to the opposite side of the floor to play defense.

Psychology? Your center airballs four free throws and mysteriously twists his ankle immediately, cries and wants out of the game. He’s quick to run across the gym to get his snack from his mom 30 seconds later.

Sure, I don’t get paid $6 million a year, but I get a nifty coaching shirt, team picture, and last season my team chipped in to buy me a gift certificate for Sportmart. Plus, I get an education in life.

Coach Jackson has nothing on me.