Mack Stripling

Mack Stripling

November 28, 2012

Working with the Dallas Mavericks, All-Star high school athlete and academic scholar, sounds like the life, right?

Justin Saunders, Stephen F. Austin senior, has lived a colorful life that has been rotated around a basketball. At 6’3” with a slender athletic build, basketball has been his highpoint throughout his life.  Growing up in the small town of Athens, TX, Saunders became a very successful basketball player. During his years at LaPoynor High School, he was named to the Academic All-state Team, Participated in two state all-star basketball games, named first-team all-region, first team All-Henderson County, and All-East Texas basketball teams.  He graduated in May of 2006 as the salutatorian of his class.

Saunders was accepted into Texas Tech his senior year, but at the last minute, he got a scholarship and played basketball for LeTourneau University then transferred after his sophomore year to attend SFA.

Saunders started working with Dallas Mavericks in 2003 as a ball boy (swept up moisture on the floor, picked up thrown headbands, even mouthpieces). He met a quite a few Mavericks players and got to know them fairly well because of the camps that he worked at that they also attended. While working, he said he saw a lot of Cowboy players such as Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith. Once, Erick Dampier invited him to a birthday party but he said, “It sounded kind of sketchy,” and ended up not going. 

In 2006, the Mavericks were playing the Heat in the NBA Finals and the Mavs were up three games to one and the Heat came back to win it. Saunders described what he saw: “It’s weird that you don’t see grown men, especially large guys, 6’10 – 250, you don’t see them just breaking down crying all the time, especially at that high of a level of sports.”

In 2009, while working with the Mavericks, Saunders was able to get to know Mavs Man, the Mavericks Mascot, really well and was offered a job to begin working for the Mavericks Street Marketing Team. He said that during game days, they would set up “Fan Experience” type things such as interactive fan games set up at different businesses and sponsor locations around the Dallas area so their customers could enjoy and support the team. 

In February 2010, Saunders was called to work at the All-Star Weekend in Dallas. He was able to get out of school for the entire week to attend the event.  Saunders was actually on court (half-court) during the most prestigious events such as the slam-dunk contest and was a rebounder during the 3-point contest.

Also while in Dallas, he said the coolest thing that he was able to do was work the practice with the East team, including NBA superstars such as LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, Paul Peirce and Dwight Howard.  He was also involved with the pre-game rituals, including the singing of the National Anthem. “I was actually on the court, holding a flag while Gretchen Wilson and the Canadian man were doing the National Anthem.” 

Another interesting thing that happened during that weekend was that Usher was doing the pregame show. Usher and his team were doing walk-throughs an hour before the show and Usher wanted to throw a basketball into the crowd then start singing. So when Saunders arrived, the stage manager wanted him to make the orange ball black. So he said he had to run around the whole cowboys stadium and find Sharpies to color the basketball black. When he finally found and was able to color the ball black, Usher only need the ball for a short amount of time. “So I did all of this work for about half a second; it was pretty funny,” Saunders said.

In 2010, Saunders graduated from SFA with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics. Even though he was accepted into Master of Business Administration Programs at Ole Miss and Tulane University, he decided to continue his education at SFA. Currently, Saunders is in his final semester of the MBA program and will graduate in December 2012.