"Albert Sanders Jr., the boy with the big dreams and the bigger drive, was scared. He was angry. Worried.
"He wanted to become a lawyer, to wow courtrooms just like Ben Matlock and Perry Mason did on his family’s clunky console TV. But in 1994, when he was 14, that dream suddenly seemed beyond reach, hence the anger and worry. He had excelled at a private school but circumstances had brought him to Jefferson High School, one of the worst in Los Angeles.
"Before his first day as a freshman, he and his mother, Paula Sanders, sat in front of the campus in her 11-year-old Volvo as she fought to hide tears.
“How am I going to realize this dream of being a lawyer and maybe working in politics one day when I’m at a school where half the kids don’t graduate?” Albert wondered to himself.
"But that was on the inside.
“He said, ‘Mom, I know what to do,’” Paula Sanders remembered. “And I believed him.”
"It was trust well-placed. Sanders would work on Capitol Hill, at the White House and at Google. These days he is head of referee operations in the NBA, and is one of the most important people in professional basketball.
"The role may seem improbable. He’s never blown a whistle, never called a foul. But to those who know him and recall the boy who grew up in South L.A., his journey is not so surprising.
“Mom, I know what to do.”
"The child of an aviation manufacturing worker and a nurse, Sanders made it abundantly clear early on that he wanted to be a lawyer. Sitting on the burgundy living room carpet, he devoured any TV show with a courtroom. He became a skilled arguer with his parents. And if he got sent to his room? The door would slam shut with the words “Sanders & Associates” taped on the outside." - The Los Angeles Times
Please click here to read the full Los Angeles Times article on Albert Sanders '01, NBA EVP, Head of NBA Referee Operations.
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Alumni Achievement