Larry Sanders had a $44m contract – and he walked away from the NBA

IIt was Christmas Eve 2014 when Larry Sanders, the rising star of the Milwaukee Bucks, knew it was over. The night before, his team had lost by seven points at home to a mediocre Charlotte Hornets squad and the Bucks’ new coach, Jason Kidd, was angry. Milwaukee, hovering around .500, was supposed to have the holidays off to spend with family, but Kidd changed those plans and decided his squad had to practice – as punishment. The players had to cancel flights and inform their families of the change – something they obviously didn’t want to do. During the Christmas Eve training, Sanders went all out. He didn’t make a lollipop gag, but, irritated, he didn’t shy away from confronting his coach either. Then, as he was the last one left in the locker room, his body began to break down.

“I had cramps from my ears to my toes,” Sanders told the Guardian. “Cramps throughout the body.”

It was the second time this stress reaction had happened to him during his young career and it forced Sanders to quickly seek medical attention. Sanders was hospitalized that Christmas Eve and Christmas. He never returned to the Bucks practice facility, despite having a four-year contract extension worth $44 million the year before. “Physically and mentally I couldn’t get myself into that anymore,” he says. “Nothing could get me in the car to go there. I had such a blockage.” The 6-foot-1 center who had averaged nearly a double-double and nearly three blocks per game a few seasons earlier was now the one being suppressed. “I didn’t touch a basketball for the next two years. Not a shot, not a dribble.”

Sanders was born on November 21, 1988 in Fort Pierce, Florida, and grew up “in the trenches”. There were seemingly gangs on every street in his neighborhood. His parents separated when he was a child and both suffered from untreated mental health problems. “They had all this trauma,” Sanders says, “all this pain. They were prone to a lot of violence [while] I don’t understand the power of therapy and the power of meditation.”

As a child, Sanders enjoyed drawing. It was his ‘escape’. He wanted to illustrate comics and work for Disney. He also had a keen interest in the ocean, winning a scholarship to study oceanography and getting to drive submarines. He was tall, but had no particular interest in basketball. But it was a basketball that would save him.

“Because I lived in the projects,” Sanders says, “there are automatically places where you live that you can’t go [due to gang conflicts].” He discovered that if he rode his bike from his house to his grandmother’s or cousin’s house while carrying a basketball, he was left alone. Gangs, even brutal ones, tend to respect the kids who can use the game to get out of the neighborhood.

“Everywhere I went, I had a ball,” he says. “It was my pass. Like, ‘Oh, he’s going to play basketball, he’s just going to go to the court. If I didn’t have that ball, I would be constantly monitored. I probably should have joined a gang to protect myself. But I didn’t even play.”

It wasn’t until high school that he really started playing the game. He was already 6 feet tall by the time he was in the 10th grade, but he was raw: In his first game, he scored on his own basket. But he started watching the pros more. His idol was Tracy McGrady, who played for the nearby Orlando Magic. Sanders, like him, wore armbands and modeled his game after McGrady’s. He quickly managed to make double-digit blocks. Later, during his 11^e and 12^e figures, his team was dominant in the region. And as a senior, he started playing AAU, traveling to Las Vegas for games. It was the people he met then who he bonded with and later enrolled at VCU.

Sanders’ college team was a force. During his three years there, his team Won 75 games and lost only 27. After his junior year, he decided to turn pro and was selected in the 15 by Milwaukee^e overall choice. Had he stayed in college, he would have played for the VCU team that made it to the Final Four under coach Shaka Smart. Still, he was excited about the NBA. “You shoot a million jump shots and you want to get paid,” he says. But in the end, the NBA wasn’t what he had hoped. “It was a blessing, but it was also a lot,” he says. “I come from nothing and then you become the one who has everything. People who are supposed to guide you become your dependents. And you’re too young for that.”

Sanders lacked a support system, both in the league and in his personal life. “You’re being fed to the sharks in many ways,” he says. “You can find yourself in a very vulnerable position… It can feel like a trap, it can feel like a trap. I felt so alone. It was so hard to even express what I was going through. Back then, in 2012, no one said they suffered from anxiety or depression – maybe Delonte Westbut everyone drove him away.”

During his second year in the NBA, Sanders smoked a joint for the first time, which was passed to him by teammates. The medicine helped, just like medicine does. But drug testing in the league led to suspensions, rehabilitations and exclusion. (These days, the NBA doesn’t test for pot.)

“Do I tend to take pills and other drugs or use alcohol?” he then wondered about substances that would not be detected. Not only that, but his need to be creative was no longer thriving. He felt hindered. “I longed for support, longed to be heard. But there was nothing in the manuscript about what I was going through at that moment.” Sanders became one of the first players to talk about mental health – but now, thanks to others like DeMar DeRozan And Kevin Love, it is a much more accepted topic. However, when you are the first to do something, you are often judged harshly for it. “There was no way I was the first [to have mental health issues],” he says. “But I was the first to say something.”

Today, Sanders is glad he did that. Not just vocally, but by publicly distancing himself from the game. That choice led to conversations that people are having now. “I have three sons who could play in the NBA one day,” he says. “To make sure their mental health is respected, sometimes you have to be the one to step on a cliff. But it’s worth it.” It wasn’t that he didn’t like the game, it was that he didn’t have what he needed when he entered it. “My body and my mind are elite,” he says. “But my environment and my environment just weren’t.”

When he decided to start running, he had two children and he knew that if he wasn’t in the right frame of mind, he couldn’t make sure they were too. He later went to another rehabilitation center. This time it wasn’t someone selected by the NBA for marijuana, although even there he maintained close relationships with patients who were there for additives to heroin and other narcotics. This is designed around therapy and emotional wellbeing. That was the last facility he’s been in since.

After two years away from the NBA, Sanders sought a comeback. He trained for a few teams and got a contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016-2017, alongside LeBron James and Kyrie Irving. But he still had a rehab period he would have to undertake before the league if he stayed on, and the team had its own internal turmoil at the time, he says. He only lasted a handful of games before being waived. Leaving the NBA for good, despite still being in his prime in his 20s, brought with it a lot of criticism. But Sanders isn’t concerned about those comments. His philosophy is: if someone isn’t there at your funeral, why worry about what they say? “One minute you’re larger than life,” he says. ‘And the next one [in their eyes] you are lower than dirt.”

Yet Sanders, who joined and continues to work at his peak, is at his peak NBA Retired Players Association, was considered by many to be one of the best defensive players in the league. He put his heroes in the paint, players he idolized. “I was their nightmare,” he says. “I thought, ‘I can really play this game. This game is really meant for me!’”

It costs too much to run away from it. But today, even though things aren’t always “perfect,” Sanders remains grateful. He also maintains his love for creativity: he has a production company and a publishing house. He writes memoirs, children’s books, a film script, he runs camps, produces music, has a foundation And a cannabis line, and he even spends summers playing in the Big3. Sanders also cultivates relationships with players dealing with their own mental health issues.

“Why I’m going so fast,” says Sanders, “is because of this has become a success story. I have to show kids that I made the right choice. That there is a way – more for us to do. That we can be successful without succumbing. All power is in the present.”