Brett Tashman

By TuAnh Dam

Brett Tashman was irate and frustrated.

Not because of the constant whirring machinery, the IV drips scattered around his room or the rounds of chemotherapy he had endured for his soft tissue cancer over the last two years.

The then-29-year-old had just finished reading a Sports Illustrated article that ripped former UCLA basketball coach Ben Howland for failing to sustain a winning legacy and for losing control of his players off the court – allowing them to fight, drink and do drugs.

Stunned and in disbelief, Tashman took it as a personal attack on his family.

Even in agonizing pain, the former UCLA basketball manager worried more for the people around him than he did about himself. He drafted and published a passionate opinion piece from his hospital bed before rallying his teammates to defend the man who mentored them at UCLA when they were gangly, fresh-out-of-high school teenagers.

“That’s just the kind of person Brett was,” said Dr. Lauren Tashman, his sister. “He wanted to help the people he cared about as much as he could.”

Tashman died after a five-year battle with desmoplastic small round cell tumor, a soft tissue cancer, last year when he was 33 years old.

While sick, he had often talked about giving back to researchers, hoping to provide other people with the tools and resources to battle cancer.

He didn’t get a chance to do it himself, but his family and friends rallied around him.

They soon created the Brett Tashman Foundation to raise money for DSRCT research, and this year the foundation will host its inaugural golf tournament July 16.

“Brett would be doing everything in his power to compile resources to end DSRCT,” said Joshua Levitt, one of Tashman's childhood friends. “Just because he isn’t physically here doesn’t mean that goal should fade. I can’t bring him back, but I can keep his spirit alive.”

He was naturally charismatic, magnetic and popular. But at his core, he was better known for his compassion, attracting people from different walks of life. His friends remember him being there for everyone whenever they needed him – no matter who they were – from middle school friends who lost their wallets right as the lunch bell rang to buddies who were struggling to muster up the nerve to approach the prettiest girl.

Jason Ludwig, a fellow basketball manager, credited Tashman with giving him the belief that he could succeed as a basketball coach. Now the director of basketball operations for the Santa Clara Broncos, he called Tashman his biggest believer, a person who projected grit and confidence.

“Being around him, I believed that nothing was out of my reach,” Ludwig said. “Whatever I wanted to do, I was talented enough to do, smart enough to do, worked hard enough to do it. He made people around him better.”

At UCLA, nothing changed. The transition was effortless for Tashman as he immersed himself in the student body – his economics classes, Lambda Alpha Chi and the Jewish community.

But nothing could compare with becoming a member of the men’s basketball team.

"There wasn't a kid as supportive or as hardworking as Brett," said Howland, currently the Mississippi State men's basketball coach. "He was full of life and just so positive, that was the kind of kid he was."

Whenever his twin brother drove up from San Diego, Tashman snuck him into Pauley Pavilion at night to shoot hoops on the court where UCLA stars like Trevor Ariza and Jordan Farmar played, proudly showcasing the championship banners hanging in the rafters.

The kid who once plastered Michael Jordan posters on his bedroom walls and loved the Boston Celtics embraced his role as a senior manager – setting up for team practices, helping coaches and staff with any office work they needed to get done and counseling kids who came to basketball camp.

The easygoing Tashman took his role as a mentor seriously. He wanted to put together a memorable three days for the hundreds of kids who came to campus.

A young camper named Adam Sraberg idolized Tashman – the counselor who offered tennis pointers, perfected his basketball fundamentals and built a relationship with him beyond just camp and UCLA. Whenever Sraberg, now a four-star recruit juggling offers to play collegiate tennis, needed advice, he turned to Tashman, a man he called “the most inspirational person he knew."

Wherever Tashman was – traveling, on the golf course, basketball court or in a hospital bed – he made time and prioritized others before himself.

His diagnosis in 2010 was a blow to his parents, siblings and closest friends.

They remember that moment vividly – where they were when he told them, what they were thinking and the grief that flooded them.

But Tashman didn’t want their pity, his brother Richard said. He saw it as a challenge, another obstacle that he would fight to overcome.

Only 200 cases of DSRCT, one of the rarest forms of sarcoma, have been diagnosed in the United States since 1989, a majority in Caucasian males. Even with surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy, more than 85 percent of patients die within five years.

Doctors gave Brett Tashman a six month prognosis.

He battled and lived for more than five years after that first appointment. But he wasn’t content with simply surviving.

Instead, Tashman immersed himself in research, looking to find experimental treatments from some of the top cancer research facilities in the country.

He stayed for months at a time at the UCLA Medical Center and the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, testing new medicine and immunotherapies to do his part in finding a cure for DSRCT.

Between the treatments and hospital stays, Tashman masked his pain, telling family and friends that he refused to let his cancer dictate his life.

Many forgot he was up against an aggressive and deadly cancer as he golfed with his best friend and dad in Palm Springs, California, in the summer, went to Clippers games, roamed the streets of Paris and traveled to London for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Even when the pain was unmanageable, indescribable or overwhelming, Tashman never allowed it to burden his family, they said.

One night, he called his sister asking what medicine she recommended he take to alleviate the pain.

When he learned that the ibuprofen that he needed was sitting on a bedside table next to his sleeping aunt, he simply told Lauren that he didn’t want to wake his aunt. He could deal with the pain.

The people around him – his own team – mattered more than the cancer did, as it always did.

Email Dam at [email protected] or tweet @tueydam.