Sanders was raised primarily in North Hollywood by his mother who was, at the time, a single parent. At the age of 12, his mother and he relocated to Denver, Colorado along with his new stepfather and soon-to-be high school basketball coach at Belleview Christian High School.He has a stepbrother named Bryson Sharpley.

During the course of his high school basketball career, Sanders won two (2) State Championships as well as three (3) Mr. Basketball awards. His Senior Year, he was not only awarded the Gatorade Player of the Year for the state of Colorado, but he was also among the top 100 basketball prospects in the country, being heavily recruited by such colleges as Kansas University, USC, and St. Louis University. All of his high school basketball accomplishments were done while he maintained a 3.8 GPA.

After transferring from Colorado State University to Saint Mary's College of California, he switched his major from BioChemistry to psychology. Sanders eventually became a 2 year starter for the Saint Mary's Gaels Men's Basketball team. He has the ability to play every position on the court, while he's most effective at the guard position. In 2005, Sanders was a starter on a Gaels team that made a first-round NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament appearance despite a first round loss to a mediocre Southern Illinois with a score of 56 to 65.

Since graduating college, Sanders has been playing semi-professional basketball outside the United States. In Lithuania he played for a 2nd-level team managed by former NBA player and Lithuanian basketball legend ?ar?nas Mar?iulionis. Sanders garnered the league's MVP award as well as an NKL championship.

After a brief appearance in the Basketball Japan League in 2006, Sanders joined the SBL of Taiwan and has since played for three different teams in the league. Despite his unsuccessful effort to lead his teams to championship, he led the league in rebounds in all three seasons he played and in assists for two seasons. He was also among the leading scorers of the league. These extraordinary contributions rendered Sanders a strong MVP candidate each year, but he has yet to win the honor.

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Jon Sanders is also a part-time poet, having published his first book of poetry Ordinary Poems for Extraordinary People in these Ordinary Times (2007) ISBN 0-595-42891-6.

• Jon Sanders is a self-professed computer geek, an enthusiastic blogger, and has a weird sense of humor. In his own video blog he joked about being willing to go so far as to even be described as "gay" in order to have something written about him on Wikipedia (his favorite site), despite having declared his sexual orientation as "straight" on his MySpace page.

• In the Fall of 1995, Jon Sanders attended Laurel Hall, a San Fernando Valley K-8 school. His 8th grade classmate was actress Kirsten Dunst. In addition, the Olson Twins were members of the school, then enrolled at the school's 4th grade level.