When John Sanders was a child, his father painted a Chicago sports-themed wall in his basement to show his dedication to the Chicago Bulls and Cubs.
Now, Sanders is keeping the sports-themed basement tradition by building his own replica of the field at Cameron Indoor Stadium, home of the Duke Blue Devils.
The 🐐 basement looks like it's in Tennessee 👀🫡 #StayCrazie https://t.co/GjdJtgpUZ2
– Duke Men's Basketball (@DukeMBB) January 9, 2024
Sanders, a teacher and assistant basketball coach at Trousdale County High School, built the court over the holidays. He said the project took him between 20 and 30 hours to complete.
Those 20-30 hours consisted of Sanders making sure the lines on the court were perfect: He traced the curved lines freehand, but he said the rest required a lot of tape.
“I was working on it between games and usually when the kids are going to bed because it was kind of hard to paint when there were little kids running around,” Sanders told ESPN.
The soon-to-be 37-year-old became a Duke basketball fan when he watched the 1994 NCAA Championship, where the Blue Devils played the Arkansas Razorbacks.
“As I grew up and discovered more about the game [basketball]I fell in love with the team [Duke] and of course, Coach K and the way he ran the program. [and] trained,” Sanders said.
Sanders has a construction business that he runs in his spare time and sees potential to build more courses in the future.
“It's fun to do things like this because I can be artistic with them and put a little bit of your touch on them,” he said.
