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MOUNT VERNON, Ohio - After ten seasons working for the NBA’s Houston Rockets, Mike Wells, a 1993 graduate of Mount Vernon Nazarene University, has been hired as an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Lakers.

Wells, who played on the Cougars’ basketball team for two seasons before serving as an assistant coach at MVNU, is excited about the opportunity to rejoin his former boss, Rudy Tomjanovich, who is the new head coach of the Lakers.

"I am really excited to be working with Rudy again,” said Wells of Tomjanovich, who he previously worked with in Houston as an assistant coach for five years and for three other years as the video coordinator. "He is one of the great coaches in the NBA, and he is an even better person. I really appreciate his loyalty to me.”

In addition to his responsibilities as an assistant coach, Wells will also be responsible for assembling, organizing and updating the Lakers’ video library for use in advance and college scouting.

For Wells, most of the highlights of his time in the NBA revolve around the players and people that he has come in contact with over the past decade. Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley, Jason Kidd, Yao Ming, and now Kobe Bryant were just some of the players that Wells mentioned specifically when asked who his favorite players have been to work with. His first season with the Rockets in 1994-1995 was the second of the team’s back-to-back NBA title seasons, and Wells also spent the summer of 2000 traveling with the United States Senior National Team that won the gold medal at the Olympics in Sydney, Australia.

"I would encourage any college students interested in getting a job in professional sports to start by being as active as possible at their current school either as a volunteer or as a student assistant,” said Wells. "Doing an internship with a professional team during the summer or after graduation would also be a step in the right direction, and above all network. In the NBA, there are only 30 teams and everyone knows each other.”

"The key is to get your foot in the door and work hard at whatever job they give you whether it is delivering the mail or making coffee,” added Wells, who did just that in his early days with the Rockets. "Hard work and making connections with the right people will pay off down the road.”

Hard work and connections have paid of for Wells as he heads into the 2004-2005 season on the bench for the nine-time NBA champions. The Lakers’ season gets under way with a preseason game on October 12 against Seattle.