From rags to riches and all the way in between.

Educate. Cap. Gown. Hand shake. Diploma.  Cheers. Family. Friends. Pride. Throw cap in air. Celebrate. Enjoy. Improve.

*****

College graduation was never supposed to be a big day in Kenny Anderson’s life.  He had bigger, better things to do than pick up a piece of paper symbolizing years of hard work and achievement, the end of one chapter and the beginning of a next.

He left college after two years, remember?  He was the second pick in the 1991 NBA Draft.  He was an NBA All-Star.  He made more than $60 million, all to play a game.  Who the hell needs a diploma, anyway?  Anderson wasn’t on top of the world, but he was far closer than most individuals would ever come.

And then he crashed. He crashed hard, and he crashed quick, with a big thud. His mother died, of a heart attack. His mentor, Howie Lawrence, who helped pay for Anderson’s high school tuition by working three jobs, passed away too. He broke up with two wives.  Lost the ability to pay child support for his children.  The $60 million disintegrated. Anderson was forced to declare bankruptcy, blowing money partially because of what he calls ghetto loyalty.

“I didn’t listen to my advisers,” Anderson says. “I just couldn’t say no to my family and my community. They made me. They watched me and protected me, the prodigy. How could I say no when someone who helped me as a kid needed a few thousand dollars because he was going to get evicted?”

“I was generous,” he says. “I didn’t say no. I used to have it bad, people calling me, crying. I used to be like, ‘Aw, damn, man.’ They were struggling. It’s hard. My accountants, they were like: ‘No!’ I’d be like, ‘But they’re getting ready to get thrown out of their house!’ So I helped.”

But it wasn’t only helping people. Sometimes, it was spending just to spend. Just to get the shiny things in life. Like a few other athletes richer than the average 9-5′er could ever dream of, Anderson spent on everything under the sun.

“I see so many of the guys in the league chasing cheers, women, money, acceptance, the press — the shiny things, as I call them,” he says. “That was me. Traveling, playing, partying, VIP.”

Anderson lost everything he had, and it took nothing less for him to finally see the error in his ways.  “I believe he had to be at the very bottom to be able to say, ‘Wow, things are different,’ ” Kenny’s third wife, Natasha Anderson, told the Washington Post in 2009. “He had to do this.”

But he couldn’t have done it without Natasha, a clinical social worker at a Miami hospital.  “Meeting Tasha,” says Irwin Levy, a friend of Kenny’s, “was huge.”

“Me and my wife — that’s unconditional love there,” Anderson says. “My other wives: infatuation. It wasn’t love. It was just something to do.”

“She just loves Kenny,” says Dick Gilbert, another of Anderson’s friends, and also a mentor. “Some of the other ones didn’t love Kenny. They loved what Kenny could bring.”

“I loved Kenny unconditionally,” Natasha says. “The only other woman who’s ever done that was his mother. And I think he first saw that after he realized he wasn’t making millions anymore, and he didn’t have all the cars and the houses — and I didn’t turn my back on him. We were going to do it together. If you fell, I fell.

“I think that’s really what it was — having that one person who loves him just like his mother did.”

Anderson’s mother recognized it, too.  Just before her death, she told Anderson, “Keep that. That’s a good woman.”

And so Kenny and Natasha Anderson marched back from the depths of bankruptcy.  And they did it by themselves.

“As an athlete, everyone always holds your hand,” Kenny says. “Nobody has been holding my hand the last few years. I do for myself. I challenged myself. I sacrificed. I did something. I do the bills now. I wash dishes. Laundry. I’m the nanny.”

Wow, you say, he does the laundry and the dishes. Whoop-de-doo. But, for Anderson, it was a drastic change. This is a man who had everything given to him, from an early age. He was the first high school player since Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabar) to be a three-time Parade All-American. He entered the NBA as its youngest player, and soon became an All-Star. He made piles of cash, and spent it on everything under the sun. He had ten or eleven cars in his garage at one point, and they weren’t Hyundais. He paid mounds of child support, loved bling and pretty women, and totaled $41,000 in expenses each month. “The thing people don’t understand is, it sounds like a lot of money — 60 million — but there’s Uncle Sam,” he told the Post. “There’s agent’s fees, financial advisers, houses, allowances for family members who don’t even work.”

His old lifestyle was fun and left Anderson famous, but it left a lot to be desired. “It’s empty,” he says. “I want to be a role model. Before I’m gone, I want to help somebody like people helped me. Not a million kids. Three. Two. One. I want one kid to be able to say, ‘Kenny Anderson helped me.’ That’s the stuff that matters.”

He runs a basketball academy now, the Kenny Anderson Point Guard Academy, and lives a comfortable life.  He no longer has a mansion, but a nice, $400,000 house.  He doesn’t have ten or eleven cars anymore, but does drive a Cadillac Escalade.  He doesn’t have a maid, but makes do by doing his own work around the house.  He’s successfully — and finally — put the NBA in his rearview mirror, adjusting to Life After Retirement.

Next month, Anderson will walk across the stage and pick up his diploma.  More than two decades after entering Georgia Tech as a spindly freshman with a reputation befitting a hoops god, he’ll graduate St. Thomas University as a humbled but happy man who finally figured life out.  The hard way.

“You know what?” Anderson says. “That day is going to be a lot better than when my name was called second in the NBA Draft and they put on my hat on stage. A lot better.”

But not perfect.

“If Mom and Howie saw me now,” Anderson says, recalling his mother and mentor. “Being a good father. Going to school. Mentoring kids. Taking care of my own. They’d be so shocked and so proud. I’m doing something I didn’t think I could do. It took me a while, but I finally learned their lessons.”

All those lessons, and the pain and heartache it took to learn them, are why throwing his cap in the air will be oh so sweet.

*****

Educate. Cap. Gown. Hand shake. Diploma.  Cheers. Family. Friends. Pride. Throw cap in air. Celebrate. Enjoy. Improve.

It took Kenny Anderson longer than it does for a lot of others, but he’s finally pointed in the right direction.

Quotes from the Miami Herald and Washington Post were used in this piece.