Casey Yetter

Interview 2

Casey Yetter

From playing basket throughout his childhood to working for the Dallas Mavericks Justin Saunders has done a lot.

Saunders grew up in Athens, a small east Texas town about an hour and a half southeast of Dallas. In 2003, during high school, Saunders played basketball and became very decorated. As a senior he was named to the Academic All State Team, played in two state all star basketball games, was named First Team All-Henderson Country, First-Team All-Region, and All-East Texas basketball teams. During high school Saunders also started working for the Dallas Mavericks as a ball boy and doing other miscellaneous jobs, anything from mopping up sweat from the court to rebounding balls.

After graduating from LaPoynor High School in 2006 Saunders knew the person who was in charge of the Mavericks Basketball Camps and got offered a job coaching. Two weeks after graduation he was working his first camp.

Saunders accepted a scholarship to play basketball at Letourneau University in Longview. “When I graduated I actually got a scholarship to play basketball in a small division three school in Longview,” he said. “I went there and played my first year and didn’t really like it that much so I started looking for an exit strategy. I’m from east Texas and my hometown is probably about an hour from Nacogdoches so it was like a perfect match. I could go home any time I wanted to but it’s far enough to where my parents weren’t bombarding me all the time.” Saunders ended up transferring to Stephen F. Austin State University.

Saunders continued to work for the Dallas Mavericks throughout college and got to experience a lot of things including two NBA final games. Through the years that Saunders worked for the Mavericks he had made connections to the mascot, who was in charge of the Mavericks Street Marketing team. On game days they would go out and set up fan experiences like dunk pits or shooting games at sponsor locations to get the fans involved.

When Saunders was a senior in college he got called to work the NBA All Star game in Dallas at the Cowboys stadium. He took off school and went to Dallas for a week and got to work in a lot of the events. He was on the court during the slam-dunk contest and rebounded balls during the three-point contest.

Throughout his work with the Dallas Mavericks Saunders met and worked with a lot of the players. He said, “It’s not like we were best friends or anything but there have been some players throughout the years that I have gotten to know really well. Erick Dampier I knew him pretty well, Matt Carroll who plays for the Charlotte Bobcats now. I knew him pretty well too. I’m trying to think, A lot of the guys in know aren’t on this team anymore. But I did get to know some of them mostly through camps.”

Saunders seemed to have the utmost respect for the work and effort these guys have to put in the game. “They have more money than you would ever spend in your lifetime,,” he said. “But at the same time they are in the position that they are because of hard work, when I think of an NBA athlete a lot of people out there have the skills to be a professional athlete but only a small amount of them actually put in the time and effort to take what they have from good to excellent. On one hand they have a lot of money but they work so hard to get to where they are now.”

Saunders said during the off season some of the guys use their money for hobbies such as buying and fixing cars, exotic trips and even being a DJ.

Saunders plans to graduate with his MBA this December but said he doesn’t want to continue work with the Mavericks. “Working for a professional sports teams is not as glamorous as it looks,” he said.  He said he hopes to get a job for the oil company he interned for last summer.