Overview:
Ron Anderson’s 10 years in the NBA included the 1988-89 season when he averaged 16.2 points and 5.0 rebounds while playing for the Philadelphia 76ers alongside Charles Barkley
Ron Anderson’s first shot in organized basketball took flight like the 1938 plane trip of New York pilot Douglas “Wrong-Way” Corrigan.
Corrigan landed in Ireland instead of his intended destination of Long Beach.
In California.
Anderson headed in his own wrong direction in the fall of 1980 when that first shot for Santa Barbara City College went into the basket of the opposing team.
It was a momentary glitch, however, in an improbable journey that took him into the stratosphere of professional basketball.
Anderson remains one of the few Americans to ever make it to the NBA despite never having played high school basketball.
The late Frank Carbajal, his coach with the Vaqueros, described him to me as “a real-life Cinderella story.”
“The odds against him becoming successful had to be tremendous,” he said. “You could write a movie about him, but nobody would believe it.”
SBCC turned out to be a steppingstone of pure gold for Anderson.
It marked the crossroads for all the alumni athletes who will be inducted into the Vaqueros’ Hall of Fame on May 31.
No road, however, was less traveled than Anderson’s.
He is joined in this year’s Hall of Fame class by former Major League Baseball pitcher Dylan Axelrod, beach volleyball Olympian Dax Holdren, women’s basketball star Carrie LaBudde-Cotter, multisport athlete and coach Chuck Melendez, long-time coach and administrator Ellen O’Connor and golf team booster Diane Wootton.
(The May 31 ceremony will begin with a noon reception at SBCC’s Campus Center, 721 Cliff Drive. Click here to purchase tickets online.)
Tall Order
Anderson played 10 years in the NBA before continuing his career overseas. He didn’t retire until after he turned 52 in 2010.
It was a remarkable career for someone who didn’t even play for the team at Chicago’s Bowen High School.
“I didn’t think I was good enough,” Anderson said. “I was a shy kid and I didn’t have the heart to try out.”
He dropped out of school at age 17 to take a job in the stockroom of a neighborhood grocery store.
The longer he worked there, however, the easier it was to reach the top shelves.
Within three years, he had grown four inches to 6-foot-7.
He soon became a first-round pick whenever sides were chosen to play basketball at the neighborhood playground.
“Out there in the parks, you’ve got to want to compete,” Anderson said. “If you lose, you may not get to play again for another 10 games.
“I was a competitor. I wanted to play.”
He did have to summon the courage to play at Stony Island Park … a decision that changed his life.
“It was in the projects, in one of the worst parts of Chicago,” he said. “It was my first time playing there.
“Normally, we don’t like to go down there. But they were having a tournament, and we decided to take a team from the neighborhood.”
Fate also brought SBCC guard Keith Williams to that park to watch his brother play.
“After the game, he came up and asked if I wanted to play in California,” Anderson said. “I had never met him before so I thought he was jiving about California.”
But the more Williams talked about Santa Barbara, the more Anderson envisioned a different future for himself.
“I wanted to get away,” he said. “I didn’t see myself going very far in that job.”
Thin Chance
Carbajal didn’t think much of his skinny new recruit at first glance.
“When he walked into the gym, I didn’t think he’d last a day,” Carbajal said. “He looked so weak.
“He had real thin legs and not a very strong-looking body. He was really underweight at the time.”
A second impression, however, was much more impactful.
“I gave him a drill to help him improve on his footwork,” Carbajal said. “I got a phone call, went up to the office and then forgot all about Ronnie.
“About an hour and a half later, I went back down to the gym — and found him still working on the same drill.
“That’s when I knew I had a guy with a chance to develop. His work ethic was the best I ever coached.”
Carbajal didn’t rate him as one of his five best players by opening night of the 1980-1981 season.
He started him anyway.
“I told everyone on the ballclub that whether or not he was good enough, he was going to start because he had outworked everybody,” he said.
Anderson got off on the wrong foot in that opener when the opponent’s first shot missed the rim.
He reacted instinctively from his experience in the half-court game of the playground: He grabbed the rebound and put the ball right back into the basket.
“I called a time out and just told him he faked the hell out of nine other guys,” Carbajal said. “They were all going in the other direction.
“We laughed it off in the huddle.”
But Anderson was so embarrassed that he asked the coach to take him out of the game.
“We told him to just forget about it,” Carbajal said. “We kept him in the game.
“The rest is history.”
Anderson earned first-team all-league honors that season while leading the Vaqueros to a 24-9 record and the Western State Conference championship.
He did have an advantage over the other freshmen, several of whom quit Carbajal’s boot-camp-tough program. He was already 21 years old.
“I was older and a little more mature,” Anderson said. “I dealt with the criticism.
“I took it as constructive criticism rather than saying this coach was picking on me.”
Class Act
He had to work even harder in the classroom after having been out of school for three years.
An administrator from Bowen High had predicted that he’d drop out again.
“She wrote a letter to the school, saying she didn’t think I’d make it as a student,” Anderson said. “But I improved as time went on.”
He made sure to take full advantage of the tutoring that SBCC offered.
“He was academically deficient when he came here, but his teachers all felt he gave a good effort and so they gave a good effort,” Carbajal said.
Paying the bills in pricey Santa Barbara was another obstacle. Anderson shared an apartment with Williams, but Carbajal suspected that he was often forced to skip meals.
“He never complained, though,” he said. “He knew this was his last chance at the brass ring.”
Carbajal improved his chances by developing him into a perimeter player during his sophomore season.
Anderson thrived in the new position. He averaged more than 20 points per game to earn junior college All-America honors and lead the Vaqueros to another 24-win season.
He made 58.8% of his field-goal attempts during his two years at SBCC.
Juicy Big Apple
Fresno State granted Anderson a full athletic scholarship. He rewarded the Bulldogs by averaging 16.3 points and 5.8 rebounds during his junior season of 1982-1983.
He and fellow forward Bernard Thompson — “The Bookends,” as they were known — took the Bulldogs on a long run through that year’s National Invitation Tournament.
They beat the likes of UTEP, Michigan State, Oregon State and Wake Forest.
That set up a championship showdown at New York’s Madison Square Garden against DePaul, a national power whose campus was located just 20 miles from Anderson’s home in Chicago.
Ray Meyer, DePaul’s fabled coach at the time, even recognized Anderson as one of the youngsters who’d show up for open gym.
“I used to see him play in our gym all the time,” he said during a pregame media conference.
Meyer soon also watched Anderson lead Fresno to a 69-60 victory over his Blue Demons and win the tournament’s Most Valuable Player Award.
“That was my greatest moment, beating DePaul and winning the NIT’s MVP award,” Anderson said.
“My mom was there, crying on my shoulder … It was excellent.”
An estimated 2,000-to-3,000 fans had traveled to New York from Fresno to support the Bulldogs.
“Nobody in New York City had ever heard of Fresno State,” Bulldogs coach Boyd Grant said at the time. “But when you win a title in Madison Square Garden, people take notice.”
The next year, a league-record crowd of 13,816 turned out at the Forum in Inglewood to watch Fresno State play UNLV in the championship game of the 1984 Pacific Coast Athletic Association Tournament. (The league was renamed Big West Conference four years later).
Anderson led the Bulldogs to a 51-49 upset over the 10th-ranked Rebels, helping Fresno State earn only the third NCAA tournament berth in its history.
He averaged 17.6 points and 6.1 rebounds that season and was picked in the second round of the NBA draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers just a few months later.
Pro-Active
Anderson, no longer the shrinking violet of Bowen High, averaged 10.6 points per game over the course of 10 seasons with five NBA teams.
And his best games seemed to come against the legends of the game.
He torched Larry Bird with 32 points in a game against the Boston Celtics. He scored 32 again against Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in the old Chicago Stadium.
“Against the Bulls, I never had a bad game,” Anderson said. “It was always a great pleasure to play there, in front of my family.”
Anderson’s best season came in 1988-1989 with the Philadelphia 76ers while playing alongside Charles Barkley, who was destined for the NBA Hall of Fame. He averaged 16.2 points and 5.0 rebounds that year.
“Playing with Charles Barkley was exceptional,” he said. “He never trained a lot and sometimes did not train at all, but he had natural easiness and skills.”
Anderson refused to quit basketball after the Washington Bullets released him in 1994.
He headed overseas and played mostly in France. He lives there still.
Anderson didn’t retire from the game until just after his 52nd birthday in November 2010.
“I’m really proud of him as he continued to play at his age,” Barkley said. “He was coming from nowhere and knew how to become a good NBA player. I am glad … and proud of Ron.”
Anderson may have gotten a late start, but he took the game of basketball as far as he could.
“Maybe I love this sport too much,” he said, “but basketball is my life.”
