It’s Memorial Day 2009. Inside Cupertino High’s dimly lit gymnasium, two traveling teams of teenage basketball stars tip off in the championship game of a weekend tournament. Local hoop-heads have pined for this matchup, which pits the underdog Bay Area Hoosiers against the Drew Gooden Soldiers, the West Coast’s storied club basketball kings. The Soldiers are sponsored by an NBA player. They count LeBron James among alumni and regularly showcase the nation’s top hoops talent to elite college coaches. This year’s edition features the Bay Area’s best young players along with ringers brought in from out of state, prospects who will go on to be ranked among the country’s best basketball recruits and who will play in All-American games. But as the game gets underway, another player steals the show. The Hoosiers’ tiny point guard is a slender high school sophomore from East Oakland named Kiwi Gardner. He stands just 5'7" tall. A mop of short dreadlocks bounces atop his head. He throws no-look passes, leaves defenders lurching at crossover dribbles and spins to the basket, racking up points and assists. In the stands, a cameraman catches it all on tape. With less than a minute left, the Hoosiers are down by two. The Soldiers’ point guard (current University of Arizona star Nick Johnson) trots the ball up court and drives toward the basket. Kiwi picks him clean. He’s got a clear path to the rim for a game-tying layup.

What’s an easy two-pointer to tie the game when you can pull up for three to take the lead? He lets the ball fly. All net. Fans go nuts. The Hoosiers hold on to beat the mighty Soldiers, and Kiwi is named tournament MVP. Not the traditional approach, but this, as fans around the globe will later learn, is Kiwi Gardner. After the game, the cameraman edits the game’s best plays into a highlight mix. Two weeks later he uploads it to his YouTube channel, Yay Area’s Finest. The end of the video zooms in on Kiwi’s face. Bright eyes. Short dreads, burnt with rust-colored tips.  No one knows it yet, but a YouTube star has just been born.

Over the coming three-and-a-half years, dozens of videos featuring Kiwi will hit the web. Reverse dunks, dazzling dribbling displays, flair and showmanship -- Kiwi’s clips will attract more than 8 million views on Yay Area’s Finest alone, along with millions more on other channels. He’ll become one of basketball’s first YouTube sensations. But basketball primarily exists outside of YouTube. And the coming years will prove Kiwi's offline world tougher to navigate.

It’s a Sunday morning, October 2013. Inside a small arena in Santa Cruz, Calif., men scrimmage on the fringes of the professional hoop dream. The Santa Cruz Warriors, NBA Development League (D-League) affiliate of the Golden State Warriors, host an open tryout for players hoping to win invites to their fall training camp and eventually make the roster. The scene is both tantalizingly close to and a universe removed from the pro basketball you watch on TV. More than 100 current NBA players have spent time in the D-League, the NBA’s official minor league. Yet most of those players grind along for little more than $13,000, plus lodging and health benefits.
 

Here’s Kiwi Gardner again, inside that Santa Cruz arena. Twenty years old now, he hasn’t added any noticeable height, but his once-slight frame is roped with muscles and tattoos. The dreads, jet black now, hang shoulder-length, bobbing as he darts about the court. More than two dozen players, several of them former collegians, try out for the Warriors on this warm autumn afternoon. Kiwi is the class of the group. He steals the ball in the backcourt, sprinting the other way for layups. He slashes to the rim, where he converts easy buckets or dishes to teammates. Santa Cruz coaches watch from the sidelines. Kiwi’s circuitous past four years -- spent suspended between Internet immortality and the harsh realm of big-business basketball -- illustrate the modern disconnect between viral fame and tangible reward. He spent an abbreviated, ill-fated stint in the Big East, college basketball’s toughest conference. The following summer, in jaw-dropping performances canonized online, he stole the show from seasoned professionals at the San Francisco Pro-Am. Then he played this past winter for a top junior college program, until leaving that team mid-season amid bizarre circumstances. He’s spent the current autumn traveling the West to put his game in front of NBA personnel: before Santa Cruz, there were tryouts in Los Angeles, Milwaukee and Portland. After, there will be three more in Northern California and Nevada. The D-League push is Kiwi’s last-ditch attempt to create a post-high school basketball career befitting his YouTube legend. The browser windows have closed and the real world has clamped down. Having renounced his college eligibility forever, it’s pro ball or bust, a lifelong NBA dream. No Plan B. “Basketball-wise, this is it,” Kiwi tells me back in Oakland. The D-League’s Nov. 1 draft is two weeks away. He drinks a Snapple at his favorite local fried fish and chicken joint, resting between workouts in sweatpants and a black Raiders beanie. “It’s do or die now. I’m putting all I got into this. All I got.”

Kiwi represents a classic sports archetype. He’s also a completely new case. Charismatic, underdog basketball players have long become legends outside the game’s mainstream. Until recently, however, none of those players had YouTube. And none had Travis Farris. Farris is the cameraman who filmed Kiwi hit that audacious three at the Memorial Day tournament in 2009. It was Farris who took Kiwi worldwide. Farris lives in San Jose, Calif. His YouTube channel is among an elite handful of online basketball mixtape outlets. He works days at Bed Bath & Beyond, then spends nights and weekends filming Bay Area high school games. He edits and uploads flashy, beat-and-dunk-driven basketball mixes to his channel, then collects ad revenue as part of YouTube’s partner program. After watching Kiwi at that spring event, Farris knew he’d found something special. “The whole tournament it was just like, ‘Oh my god, he can do this? Now he can do this? Then he dunks, too?!’” Farris says. “Then in the championship he had that crazy moment. I just thought, ‘You never see anything like this.’” Several months later, the 2009-2010 high school season began. Farris began driving the two-and-half-hour round trip to Manteca, Calif. (Kiwi’s mother had sent her son to high school in the Central Valley town to create some separation from Oakland’s criminal influences, as well as provide stability while she spent weeks away working on merchant ships.) Despite the distance, Farris says he made the long haul about 15 times to film Kiwi during his junior season. Smart move. In one clip from that winter, 16-year-old Kiwi throws down a leaning, lefthanded dunk. That video has racked up more than 2 million views. His junior year highlight mix has more than 600,000. Highlights from a 52-point game have been watched more than 100,000 times.

Yay Area’s Finest would explode in views, subscribers and popularity, growing from a simple hobby to a viable second job over the coming years. Farris’ videos of Kiwi have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in Taiwan and the Philippines, and tens of thousands of times in Hong Kong, Russia, the UK, Germany, France and Australia. One viewer ripped a Yay Area’s Finest mixtape of Kiwi and re-uploaded it to YouTube with a Chinese title. That clip now totals more than 2.4 million views. “他是Kiwi Gardner!!!!!” reads one comment there. “It wouldn’t be possible without Kiwi paving the way,” Farris says of his business's growth. “He basically built the audience. He’s unmatched as far as guys I’ve covered.”

During a recent a drive around the neighborhoods where he learned the game, Kiwi reflects on his and Farris’ intertwined rise. Farris is “family to me now,” he says. “No doubt about it.” Kiwi’s in-person demeanor on this sunny Oakland afternoon contradicts the persona you see on YouTube. He’s soft-spoken, but obviously sharp. His on-court exuberance is replaced by a measured cool. He seems relaxed but guarded, answering questions in a low-key, even tone as we cruise by his old basketball haunts. Today, Kiwi says, he can walk into any gym in America and young players will likely recognize him. Occasionally people approach him at Starbucks or the mall. He says the attention from Farris’ mixes is “just life, really.” But he does admit it's pretty “cool.” Two years out of high school now, he’s signed with an agent to turn pro after just nine games of organized post-secondary ball. Yet he insists YouTube fame has never affected the way he plays the game or sees himself. I’m inclined to believe that. The flamboyance, the competitiveness -- perhaps those traits attracted Farris’ camera more than than they were magnified by it. It’s easy to forget Kiwi’s a 20-year-old kid who’s been in the public eye for years and now stands at a personal and professional crossroads -- before he can even order a beer. But whatever online glory did or didn’t mean to him in the past, as he stares at the basketball abyss, Kiwi says he’d easily trade it all to grasp the future he’s dreamed of since childhood. “There’s only really one thing I wanna remember, you know?” he says. “That’s playing in the League [the NBA]. That’s the only jersey, the only picture, the only film I want to remember.”

After Kiwi’s electric junior year, coupled with Farris’ camerawork, launched him from anonymity to Internet basketball notoriety, he spent the following spring and summer playing for the Soldiers. They toured the country, facing off against America’s best prospects under the watchful eyes of coaches from around the nation. At an April tournament in Virginia, the Soldiers went up against Marquis Teague, then the nation’s top-rated point guard prospect. Early in the game, Kiwi stripped Teague of the ball, speeding down-court for an easy layup. The Soldiers won by 50 points. Today Teague plays for the Chicago Bulls. That summer put Kiwi on the national scouting radar, and he left California to spend his senior year at Westwind Prep, an Arizona boarding school that promised more exposure and competition against talented players from across the country. “Kiwi killed while he was there,” says Rodger Bohn, a writer who covers high school hoops nationally for basketball bible Slammagazine. “It was one of those things where they’d play teams with guys ranked higher than him, guys with bigger reps than him. But at the end of the day, Kiwi would usually be the best player on the floor.” Kiwi committed in April 2011 to play for the Friars of Providence College. Providence plays in the Big East Conference, which until a reorganization earlier this year, was widely considered the nation’s premier college basketball federation. He returned home to spend the summer preparing for the transition, working out and playing in the San Francisco Pro-Am with NBA players and Americans who have gone pro overseas. In one game, an 18-year-old Kiwi scored more than 50 points, slapping hands ith his astonished grown-up teammates after retiring to the bench. Farris’ camera rolled on, the YouTube clips racked up more views and old media took note.

Wrote ESPN’s college basketball blog: “It all just adds to Gardner's growing legend, as the 5'7" point guard is simply breathtaking to watch at times. He has the name, the hair and the stylish game to match.” With his YouTube videos having already built him a following among hardcore fans and national media beginning to take note of his talent, Kiwi felt great as summer wound to a close. Providence had a brand new coach, Ed Cooley, set to start his first season. Kiwi was Cooley’s very first recruit. He was off to play college ball against the nation’s best, one step closer to his ultimate goal: the NBA. “The thing about Providence is it was the first choice,” Kiwi says back in Oakland, his voice straining slightly at the recollection. “I was there. It seemed perfect.” While most Friars fans didn’t expect Kiwi to be an immediate star, his YouTube fame and exciting style of play had preceded him to create buzz and anticipation, according to David Pean, founder and editor of the FriarBlog fan site. Kiwi enjoyed campus life, and Friars supporters took to his personable nature. A @KiwiTranslator Twitter account was born, offering comedic interpretations of the slang-ridden posts Kiwi made to his own profile. Then, in October, a bombshell.

Providence announced the NCAA had found a problem with Kiwi’s high school transcript, saying credits from one of his Westwind classes were not transferrable, rendering him ineligible to play as a freshman. Providence appealed. The appeal was rejected. In December, Kiwi was ruled out for the entire season. A financial aid package let him stay on as a student, but he couldn’t practice or play with the team. Not being part of the team was hard, but he saw the ruling as a temporary setback and managed to have fun living life as a regular student through the frigid Rhode Island winter. “It was an amazing experience,” he says. “I loved it there. It was good. I was waiting on the year to come. I was eager to get back.” Once again, he returned home to California for the summer to work out and play in the San Francisco Pro-Am. Once again, Farris’ camera rolled. Once again, Kiwi’s mixes killed on YouTube. Kiwi Gardner games became events for Bay Area basketball fans, another testament to his popularity. He took home league MVP honors that summer. “This little 5’7” kid who’s never played a game of D-1 ball was drawing bigger crowds than NBA guys,” Farris says.

Cooley had successfully recruited the nation’s top-ranked point guard, a 6'3" All-American, for the following season. He’d also brought in one of the country’s best shooting guards, and two other returning guards had flourished the previous season while Kiwi sat out. It made for a crowded backcourt. Kiwi says he was just days away from returning to Providence to compete for playing time in his long-awaited first year of college ball when Cooley contacted him with a grim message. “It was weird. I don’t know where it came from,” Kiwi says. “He basically just said, ‘We don’t have any more room for you.’” A Providence athletic department spokesperson said a “mutual decision” was made for the basketball program and Kiwi to part ways. But the severed ties left him in a tough spot; major colleges had long-since filled out their 2012-2013 rosters, leaving him with drastically limited options.

Kiwi landed at Midland College, a junior college of 1970s buildings arranged on a circular campus, located in the windy plains of West Texas. The Chaparrals historically have a strong basketball program and play in one of the nation’s most competitive junior college conferences. Kiwi’s plan upon arrival was simple: Get better playing against good players, stay on track academically, then transfer back to a Division 1 program in a year or two. In reality, he wouldn’t last a season at Midland. On the court, Kiwi put up mediocre numbers in his partial season. He says his relationship with coach Chris Craig was erratic: a lack of communication and drastic swings in playing time for no clear reason. He was among the team’s best players, according toMidland Reporter-Telegram beat writer Oscar LeRoy, showing top-notch athleticism and talent but sometimes struggling with turnovers and game management. “He played hard when he was here,” LeRoy says. “There's no doubt about that. The potential was there for him to become really a very good player.” Midland was a far cry from the Big East’s massive budgets, NBA talent level and national TV broadcasts. It was even a world removed from Farris’ handheld camera and highlight mixes. Other than old YouTube footage, Kiwi had by and large fallen off the basketball map. Frustrated, he would call Marvin Lea, with whom he’d bonded at Westwind Prep in Arizona. Lea played four years of college ball at Pepperdine and was a Westwind teacher when Kiwi attended the Arizona prep school. Today he’s a basketball trainer who’s worked with NBA players Kawhi Leonard and Tony Snell. Now living in Southern California, he became a mentor and father figure for Kiwi during their time at Westwind. “He was like, ‘Man, it’s weird over here,’” Lea recalls of their phone conversations.

In mid-January, Coach Craig suspended Kiwi from the Midland team indefinitely for an unspecified violation of team rules. By the end of January, Kiwi had left the team. Two months later Coach Craig resigned as Midland coach, days after tweeting about end-of-the-world prophecies and posting dozens of pages of handwritten notes to his personal blog, calling Barack Obama “the Antichrist” and Mitt Romney a “false prophet,” according to local news reports. In July, Craig drew attention for “calling himself an ‘Islamist jihadist’ and threatening the demise of Mormons and Catholics at sites across Arizona and Colorado,” according to The Coloradoan. In August, he was arrested for drug possession. Over fish, chicken and fries, I ask Kiwi why he left Midland rather than stick it out the rest of the season and find a new school. In retrospect, he says, the biggest factor was dissatisfaction with a college basketball experience that in two years had dealt him mostly letdown and disappointment. “I’m thinking to myself, ‘What am I playing for?’” he says. “I wasn’t playing for me. I was playing for a scholarship. And I didn’t like that, just knowing what a scholarship did for me last time. It didn’t really do much. That scholarship was taken easily, and then I was left with nothing. So playing for that same thing, it just…” He trails off. After leaving Texas, he returned home briefly. On Feb. 13, his mother and grandmother drove him the three hours from Oakland to Fresno. Lea was there to watch his trainee Snell play one of his final college games, against Fresno State. Kiwi’s mother and grandmother handed him off to Lea outside Save Mart Arena. After the game, Kiwi rode with his old Westwind mentor back down to Los Angeles for a new start.

This past spring Kiwi Gardner — all 5 feet 7 inches of him, and having played only a handful of officially organized basketball games over the past two years -- declared for the 2013 NBA Draft. He went unselected in the June 27 draft, but that came as a surprise to no one, including himself, Lea and his new agent, Noah Betzing. Signing with Betzing made Kiwi a pro in the eyes of basketball’s powers-that-be, ruling any potential return to college out of the question. After his mother and grandmother dropped him off with Lea, Kiwi trained for up to eight hours per day over the spring and summer in Los Angeles. Cardio. Weights. Beach runs. Jump shots. Situational work. More jump shots. He stayed with Betzing or Lea between occasional trips back to the Bay Area, while chronicling the journey on his own new YouTube channel. Declaring for the NBA Draft was just part one of Kiwi and team’s D-League plan. In theory, if he got into a minor league training camp, then made the roster, worked his way up the depth chart and played well enough to garner interest from the NBA this season, declaring would make him eligible for a mid-season call-up. But first, the matter of getting into a D-League training camp. The D-League is rife with former college stars and even veteran pros fighting for one last NBA contract. Generally speaking, open tryouts are the hardest way to make it. Hardest, but not impossible. The Santa Cruz Warriors invited a player named Daniel Nwaelele to training camp after last year’s open tryout. He made the team, did well last season and spent time in an NBA training camp this fall before being cut. Another player named Stefhon Hannah broke into the D-League via an open tryout and has been its defensive player of the year the past two seasons. A player named DJ Kennedy caught on with the D-League’s Erie BayHawks through a local open tryout and actually climbed all the way up to the NBA, where he appeared in two regular season games for the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2012. Nwaelele, Hannah and Kennedy were all four-year college players, however.

Besides being undersized for pro ball, Kiwi must face another hurdle in trying to impress D-League teams: YouTube highlights are entertaining and build an independent fan base, but pro scouts and coaches want to see on-court refinement typically learned in college ball. At the Santa Cruz tryout, it’s obvious Kiwi’s making a concerted effort to prove he’s more than just a preternaturally talented whirling hoops dervish. After a couple hours of scrimmaging, the Santa Cruz coaches send most of the players home and invite 15 to stick around for one last run. Kiwi is among them. With 5.8 seconds left, the final scrimmage is tied. Kiwi receives the sideline inbounds pass near half court, draws the defense and assists for a game-winning layup. “Ballgame, baby!” he yells to no one in particular. “Good call, coach! Way to execute, fellas! Way to listen!” But with just over a week until the Nov. 1 D-League draft, there’s been no word from the Warriors, nor any of the other teams Kiwi tried out for. A direct invite to a training camp would remove him from the draft pool and eliminate one step of his roundabout dream chase. Otherwise, it’s sit and sweat through eight rounds of drafting. And what if no one does call? Then what? Get some student loans and go back to school as a normal student? Get a regular 9-to-5 job? “Probably not a regular job, but a job, something that’s gonna provide for me financially in this real world we’re riding in,” he says, as we drive down East Oakland’s notorious main drag, International Boulevard. “Hopefully it’s close to the game. Hopefully it is the game. But certain situations require different things, as far as life goes. You’ve got to livein reality. I’m a realist.” The days march on.
 
 

It’s Halloween. Judgment day is little more than 24 hours away. Kiwi has retreated to Sacramento to stay with a high school friend and, he says, “try to get some alone time.” He gets to the gym for a couple workouts each day, his high school buddy rebounding jump shots, and watches NBA games on TV. “I’m nervous,” Kiwi tells me with one day to go. “I’m just waiting and seeing now. It’s all definitely been on my mind. It’s kind of hard not to think about, with it playing such a big role in my life.” The tryouts in Santa Cruz and other points around the West are all over. No direct training camps invites have come, so there’s nothing left to do but hope for the draft. But when it actually arrives, Kiwi says, he’ll be too tense to follow online. He’ll try to keep his mind off it -- but make sure to keep his phone nearby for any good news. Tomorrow’s draft is Kiwi's final shot. Getting the call from a team would mean his dream to play pro ball stays alive at least a few more weeks. The Nov. 1 draft’s first selection is Grant Jerrett, a 6-10 forward with a deadly outside shot from the University of Arizona. In the third round, the Delaware 87ers pick Aquille Carr, a tiny point guard from Baltimore whose own highlight mixes catapulted him to viral fame a couple years after Kiwi. Carr skipped college, then landed in the D-League draft after a short stint attempting to go pro overseas. The fourth round passes. Kiwi’s name goes uncalled. The fifth round passes. The sixth round passes. Finally, in the seventh round, the Santa Cruz Warriors use their final pick on Kiwi. Tweets and texts pour in. Kiwi would have been ecstatic for a shot with any of the D-League’s 17 teams, but a chance to play for his favorite NBA squad’s minor league affiliate less than two hours from his own hometown? That would be a dream come true.

After nearly two weeks of practice, Santa Cruz hosts the Reno Bighorns on Nov. 14. The first of two pre-season exhibition games, it will be a crucial measuring stick as the Warriors look to whittle their 14-man training camp roster down to a regular season maximum of 12. For fringe players like Kiwi, playing well is essential. With two minutes and 29 seconds left in the first half and the Warriors losing by 10 points, Santa Cruz coach Casey Hill finally puts Kiwi in the game. Wearing number 17 and with his long dreads pulled back in a tight ponytail, Kiwi sets a hard screen on his very first play. It frees a teammate to swish an open three-pointer. Soon after, Kiwi dives on the floor to wrestle a rebound away from a bigger Reno player. He’s a terror on defense, too, dogging his man up and down the floor. “Atta boy, Gardner!” a middle-aged man bellows from the stands near mid-court. Kiwi scores his first bucket on a fastbreak layup, with about 30 seconds left to pull the Warriors within three points. The Warriors end the half down by just two -- an eight-point swing since Kiwi checked in. Kiwi swaggers off the court to the locker room, jutting his chin with an exaggerated nod toward teammates and fans. Santa Cruz goes on to win 113-92. Kiwi finishes with three points, two assists, two rebounds and zero turnovers in just under 10 high-energy minutes. The evening has, by all measures, been a resounding success. Kiwi signs autographs for fans after the game.
“Kiwi Gardner continues to amaze us as a coaching staff,” Hill tells reporters outside the locker room. “When you get a streetballer coming into the D-League, the biggest thing you have to do is help him play within himself, play within the structure. He does a really good job of that.” One week later, on Thursday, Nov. 21, Santa Cruz is set to release its opening night roster. Though the team played its final pre-season game nearly a week earlier, a game Kiwi missed due to illness, the Warriors have been keeping Kiwi and the other hopefuls on pins and needles. Thursday is the league deadline; anyone who isn't on the roster won't be on the team this year. Two players from training camp are gone, having been sent home to ponder their basketball futures. Another is in Oakland with the Golden State Warriors after a call-up to the big-league squad. And the fifth name on the roster is Kiwi Gardner. When we talk on the phone that afternoon, Kiwi is nonchalant about the news, calling it a “pretty regular” day. Actually, it’s the culmination of two tumultuous years, plus months of grinding uncertainty. But the D-League’s non-guaranteed contracts mean that he will, in a sense, perpetually have to try out. “Coach Hill told me to just keep doing what I’ve been doing, keep playing hard, and that’s why I’m still here,” he says. “I just can’t get complacent. I need to be here.” I ask if a Thursday night celebration is in order after the good news, but Kiwi demurs. He’ll probably try to stay hydrated and rest for opening night. It may be the minor leagues, the pay isn’t much and the NBA is still several hard steps away, but Kiwi Gardner is finally a professional basketball player. And tomorrow? He's got to go to work.