SportTechie’s Athletes Voice series features the views and opinions of the athletes who use and are powered by technology. SportTechie spoke with Knicks Gaming point guard Adam Kudeimati about his team’s championship in the first season of the NBA 2K League and his popular YouTube channel.
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Adam Kudeimati has spent half his life as a video producer. The 20-year-old from Wayne, N.J., started his YouTube channel, ThatKiddKuda, when he was 10. He now has more than 314,000 YouTube subscribers, 90,000 followers on Twitter and Instagram—and one esports championship.
Knicks Gaming selected Kudeimati in the fourth round of the inaugural NBA 2K League draft last March. (This year’s draft is set for March 5.) He played point guard, averaging 16.8 points and 10.6 assists per game while leading the league with 85 three-pointers as his squad claimed the first championship. Kudeimati donated $10 for every three-pointer to Nothing But Nets, the malaria-fighting charity championed by his favorite player, Warriors superstar Steph Curry. With the help of a few other contributors, Kudeimati raised $1,890.
He will return for season two of the NBA 2K League while taking online college classes through Penn State World Campus and continuing to produce YouTube videos. He said he’d like to explore his interests in fashion and film, and as luck would have it, the head scout and creative consultant for Knicks Gaming is Entourage star Jerry Ferrara (Turtle).
Youth Sports
“I played three sports a year: baseball, basketball, and football. So the next best thing once I would get home from practice or playing with my friends would be to hop on Xbox and play the virtual simulation of whatever sport I was enjoying at the moment.
“There were different periods where I was really infatuated with baseball, so I’d play MLB. At times, I loved football so I’d play a bunch of Madden and NCAA College Football. Basketball has always been my primary sport. I loved NBA Live growing up. Those were my three games, and I didn’t really play anything else. I didn’t play shooters. I didn’t play fighting games. I was just a sports fanatic.
Basketball IQ
“I played point guard growing up. I happened to be the shortest person on the court, which is probably why I played point guard, but because of that, I was absolutely night and day on ESPN, SportsCenter, and just absorbing as much basketball content as I could. I was watching YES Network with the Nets and MSG with the Knicks. I began to love the game at a young age.
“I’d study players like Steve Nash, and by study, I really just mean focus on them while watching when I was younger. It’s not like I was breaking down film or anything, but it came from a place where I loved how some of these point guards played—like Chris Paul and Nash and Jason Kidd, those were my favorite three growing up. I tried to watch what they did so I could emulate it when I played basketball. At a young age, I realized I loved the X’s and O’s.”
Virtual Ball
“My first introduction to the NBA 2K series was 2K7. I had been playing NBA Live exclusively until that time, but then I tried 2K7 because I loved Shaq and he was on the cover of that game. I remember coming home from GameStop and putting it in my Xbox and just remembering that it was the hardest basketball game I’d played at the time. I actually made my dad take me back to GameStop and return it the same day. I picked up Live 07 instead.
“I didn’t pick up another 2K game until 2K10, actually, when Kobe Bryant was on the cover. They introduced this new mode called MyPlayer mode, which was essentially a career mode where you make a virtual character and take him through the D-League at the time and eventually the NBA. At the point in my life, I knew I wasn’t going to be a real professional basketball player, so making a virtual guy who was going to go pro was the second-best thing.”
Amateur Gaming
“When I started to create content on YouTube that revolved around NBA 2K . . . I started getting comments in the comment section, ‘Wow, you’re really good at this game.’ Or people would ask to play me just to see if they could beat me. I don’t even really know where it came from. I guess it was just a knack that I had for the game or for gaming in general, and then that mixed in with my knowledge of basketball at the time. I studied the game when I was younger. I had a passion for that side of things. I just took what I knew and tried to mimic it virtually in 2K, and it worked out.
“We did community tournaments with YouTubers, and I just remember beating everyone all the time. We did this one tournament where it was a March Madness tournament. You play as a college team full of NBA players from that university. My favorite player is Steph Curry, and there’s only one Davidson alum in the NBA that I know of and it’s Steph Curry. So I remember making a team with just Stephen Curry, and then all these other players in the NBA that were the lowest-rated in the game because there was no one else from Davidson. I put that team up against some of my YouTube buddies who had UNC, UCLA, and some of these great basketball schools, and I made it all the way to the finals with literally just Stephen Curry and no one else.”
The NBA 2K League Draft
“It was unreal just being in that atmosphere and that environment. Being a Knicks fan growing up, you never think that you’ll be drafted in MSG, right? It’s just a far-fetched dream. Being inside the Hulu Theater was amazing. I got drafted a little bit later, in the fourth round, so I had to sit through some calls and a bunch of picks, but when it eventually happened, I just remember it being such a rush of so many different emotions. It was just funny, walking up to that stage, picking up the hat, shaking the managing director’s hand, and before you knew it, the moment was over.”
Esports Training
“In terms of the actual gaming regimen, it wasn’t anything too intensive or too serious. I know in some other esports, they’re required to do like 18 hours a day, and I know some people in this league opt for that style of practicing. For us, last year, that really wasn’t what worked and, personally, that’s just never been my style to play that many hours a day because I just don’t feel that quantity always means quality.
“The way we had it handled and set up last year was great. We’d be in the practice building at MSG by 9 or 10 a.m. We’d warm up for an hour or two with random pick-up games or just figuring out our strategy for the upcoming week. We’d have a quick lunch break at 12, and we’d be back by 12:30, 1 for the next three or four hours. Half of those hours would be split in terms of either playing or scrimmaging or just watching film.
“For us, film was the biggest part of everything. Everyone in the league is well-equipped to perform. Everyone’s good enough to be in the league, so really it’s just a matter of trying to understand how to win games by breaking down film or understanding what the opposing team has planned more so than working on your shot or working on actual in-game mechanics.”
Building a Championship Team
“It was a really unique experience because you’re put in this new environment with so many different people from so many different backgrounds with different viewpoints and different perspectives on things, so you have to just figure it out. We did that. It took us a little bit, but it ended up working out really well, of course.
“Personally, I think the way we all played in the beginning was kind of jumbled because we didn’t really know our places within the team or how we should be playing together. As the year went on and we started to adjust our game plan and figure out the style of play that worked the best in the league, we were able to pick up on that and do it better than anyone else.
“Specifically, it was the third and final midseason tournament, the Ticket Tournament, in which you essentially just punched your ticket into the playoffs if you win it all. We had been one of the worst teams in the league going into it. We made a complete lineup overhaul where I started playing under this new role. I was still point guard, but I was playing this new role that kind of mimics Stephen Curry, funny enough. I was just getting a bunch of threes up. We switched one of our teammates, Nate [Kahl], to become our primary defender. He would tend to guard ball. We went into that tournament and never really looked back. I averaged, I think, 30-something points throughout, we won the entire [tournament], and we got our ticket punched into the playoffs.
“We kept up that style of play, and teams tried to emulate it. But since we had picked up on it so much earlier than anyone else, no one was able to catch up, and we rode off that wave all the way into the championship, which we eventually won.”
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