New England, middle, and southern colonies

I was born in a country where basketball was not so popular. It was mostly for the rich people, because they were the ones that could afford paying lots of money to the coach, and the team to be able to play and learn the game. Since there wasn't too many basketball coaches in Iran, we didn't have many basketball teams for different age groups. Out of all of my friends I had in Iran for the 11 years I lived there, only one of them played basketball in a league. He wasn't even playing for his own age group either, he was playing 1 year up. He was really good of what I could remember, but I just thought that because I didn't know how to play. Has something like that happened to you ever when you see somebody doing something and you know nothing about it and think to yourself "WOW, he's really good", but it turns out they only know the basics!!! Now remember this, that only one of my friends played basketball, and he was really good; because we will get to this later on in the story.
In my family no one was interested in basketball at all, well my dad did follow the NBA scores from the sports news on TV like every other week. They never showed any NBA basketball games on TV, there was only a show that was on every Friday mornings at 5 o'clock IN THE MORNING! Since there wasn't many people interested in basketball in Iran, there are not many talented and very good basketball players from Iran. Either in the NBA, or the Iran's league itself.
Now I hated basketball also when I was in Iran. I couldn't even stand watching it for a few seconds when there was a game on the TV. And to be honest, I never held a basketball for my whole entire first 12 years of life! But I did shoot a soccer ball in the indoor facility where my dad's soccer team was practicing. I mean I actually didn't take a
Make up "Participation Points" (for 9/9/11) shot with my hands either! It was with my foot that I tried to put it into the basket. Of course I didn't make it, BUT at least I did play