Lara Sanders

Lara Sanders — Biography

Lara Sanders, born LaToya Antoinette Sanders, is an American-raised basketball coach and former player who took Turkish citizenship in 2012 and played for Turkey. In 2019, her final WNBA season, she won the championship with the Washington Mystics. After leaving the court she moved into coaching and has been an assistant coach of the Atlanta Dream since 2025.

She was born in Nuremberg to a family with a military posting, and the family later settled in Fayetteville, North Carolina. At Seventy-First High School she was named North Carolina's 4-A Miss Basketball in her last two years and led the team to state titles in 2003 and 2004. At the University of North Carolina she started every one of the Tar Heels' 38 games in her junior year, her first as a starter, and her 3.18 blocks per game ranked fifth in the NCAA. In the 2008 WNBA draft she was taken 13th overall in the first round by the Phoenix Mercury.

In the WNBA she also played for the Minnesota Lynx and Los Angeles Sparks; after 2011 she stepped away from the league to play overseas and returned in 2015 with the Mystics. Abroad she played for Maccabi Ramat Hen in Israel, Kayseri Kaski in Turkey, UMMC Ekaterinburg in Russia (2017-18 EuroLeague champions), Reyer Venezia in Italy and Çukurova Basketbol. With Turkey she took part in the 2014 FIBA World Championship, EuroBasket Women 2015 and the 2016 Rio Olympics. She retired as a player in March 2021, became a Mystics assistant coach the following month and was promoted to associate head coach after the 2022 season.