Cavalier Great Sees His Persistence Rewarded

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — A continent away from the United States, Justin Anderson couldn’t help himself. He kept opening his computer and checking to see if the final grades for two classes had been posted.

It was June, and the former University of Virginia star was in Belgrade, Serbia, preparing to play for his professional team, Dubai Basketball, in the ABA League Finals. During the playoffs, he’d taken two online classes at UVA—one on screenwriting, the other on gender and sexuality—and when he didn’t see his grades posted Anderson emailed his professors to ask if they needed anything else from him.

They told him not to worry and that he’d done excellent work. “I think was I overdoing things just so I could make sure that I did it the right way and got a good grade,” Anderson said on a recent Zoom, laughing.

Those two classes represented the final stage of an academic journey that began for Anderson in 2012, when he arrived at UVA as a first-year student. Fourteen years later, his work on his bachelor’s degree in media studies is done.

“Finishing it was amazing,” Anderson said. “It was an unbelievable feeling, because now I can call myself an alum. I couldn't say that before.”

ALL LOVE FAMILY ♾️ https://t.co/YFdcy5dGyD

— Jus (@JusAnderson1) June 16, 2026

Anderson, a 6-foot-6 wing, turned pro after his junior year at Virginia. The Dallas Mavericks drafted him with the 21^st pick of the first round in 2015, so from a basketball standout his decision to leave school early made sense.

Still, Anderson said, completing his degree “was always something in the back of my head. And a lot of that is inspired by my mom. As young men, you always want to make your parents proud, especially your mom, and you know that they value that type of stuff.”

He’s delighted that his mother, Kim Anderson, who lives in Fredericksburg, will “be able to hang that degree in the house. And there's a level of completion that I have from a boy to a man. It took me a lot longer than the usual undergrad to feel that level of completion, and it couldn't have been a better moment.”

His classmates in then-head coach Tony Bennett’s program included Mike Tobey and Evan Nolte, both of whom walked the Lawn in 2016. “After I left that third year,” Anderson said, “I kept up with those guys, and when they graduated, I wished I was able to be there with them. I knew that that feeling of completion was something that I wanted. We all came in together. I knew I wanted to finish it. I just didn't know when. I didn't know if I had the time.”

Several of the players Bennett coached at UVA left early to pursue pro careers. Two of them later finished work on their degrees: Kyle Guy in 2025 and Anderson this year.

“I am so happy and so proud of those guys,” Bennett said. “I’m just old school enough to believe that when you stepped into a university in the era that I coached, it still was about an education and a degree. That’s what we sold them on. We said, ‘You can have it all here. You can have a degree from UVA. You can compete at the highest level, and you can become a professional basketball player if you improve enough.’

“It’s a beautiful thing to finish something that you said you were going to do, and at a place like this, it’s not just lip service.”

Anderson was about 30 credit hours shy of graduation when he left UVA in 2015. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and Virginia shifted to online classes, he seized the opportunity to make some progress on his degree. He took three classes in the summer of 2020, a fourth in the fall of that year and then a fifth in the spring of 2021.

For most of Bennett’s tenure at Virginia, TJ Grams was his program’s academic coordinator. Grams left in the spring of 2021 to become director of operations for George Mason men’s hoops, and Jazlyn Eddings succeeded him at UVA. As Grams had, Eddings encouraged Anderson to keep pushing toward his degree.

“We’re just kind of chipping away at it at that point,” said Eddings, who’s now Virginia’s assistant athletics director of student success.

Anderson, who played for six NBA teams and in the G-League, finished three more classes before signing with a Spanish team, Rio Breogán, in 2023. That put him within sight of the finish line, and “I was like, ‘Come on, you've only got two [left],’ ” Eddings recalled.

“She was just as invested as my mom was,” Anderson said of Eddings.

Communicating with Anderson when he was in Dubai, which is eight hours ahead of East Coast time, was challenging at times for Eddings, but “Justin’s great,” she said. “He’s a hard worker, and anything I asked him to do, it got done.”

Anderson remains close with his college program. He’s built a strong relationship with the Cavaliers’ current head coach, Ryan Odom, and is a mentor to sophomore point guard Chance Mallory.

“Hopefully he can take the program back to the mountaintop,” Anderson said of Mallory, who’s from Charlottesville. “That would be big time, wouldn’t it?”

Anderson’s pro career has taken him from the NBA, where he played for Dallas, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Brooklyn, Indiana and Cleveland, to the G-League to Europe to the Middle East.

In Spain, he lived in Lugo, Valencia and Barcelona and loved those experiences. In Dubai, he joined a team that pays him handsomely “and gave me an opportunity to be a part of history,” Anderson said.

On June 12, Dubai Basketball edged Partizan Mozzart Bet 83-81 to win the championship series 3-1. The title was the club’s first. Anderson’s teammates in Dubai this coming season will include another former UVA standout, Mamadi Diakite.

“It’s an unbelievable organization,” Anderson said. “First class. They treat us like NBA players. Now that I’m looking at the last years of my career, hopefully I can retire here in Dubai.”

DUBAI BASKETBALL ARE THE 2025/26 #ABALiga CHAMPIONS! 🏆

A historic night. A historic achievement. The first trophy in club history. ✨ pic.twitter.com/PDH5ScZ2HL

— Dubai Basketball (@dubaibasket) June 12, 2026

It’s been a memorable year for Anderson. He and his wife, Emely, were married in the Dominican Republic last month. Among those who attended the wedding were former UVA standouts London Perrantes, Devon Hall, Malcolm Brogdon, Akil Mitchell and Ty Jerome.

Finishing work on his bachelor’s degree “was awesome,” Anderson said, “and then after winning the championship, it was just like, ‘Now it’s time to go get married.’ So it was just a big, big two months for me.”

As Anderson began wrapping up his classwork, Eddings said, “he just kept saying, ‘It hasn’t hit me yet, but I’m about to graduate.’ And when we finally got two final grades,’ he was like, ‘OK, thank you. I think it just hit me. I can't believe that I finished this.’ ”

Bennett said: “I think it’s just a great finishing touch, especially with him getting married. It kind of all came at the right time.”

Looking ahead to next spring, Anderson isn’t sure if he’ll be able to return to Grounds and walk the Lawn during Final Exercises. Dubai Basketball’s season is likely to still be going on.

“I've kind of come to grips with that,” Anderson said. “So I think what I'll do is, I'll just get a photographer and I'll get the cap and gown once the degree comes in the mail and probably come down to Charlottesville and all of the big historical sites, and maybe I'll walk the Lawn by myself.”

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