Like many kids growing up playing basketball in Flint, Kieon Arkwright was chasing a big dream: making it to the NBA. And he actually fulfilled it, just not necessarily in the way he would’ve imagined when he was young.
From 2019 to 2022, he was the founder and director of the Denver Nuggets Youth Basketball Academy. In addition to teaching kids basketball skills, the programs he ran through the academy also taught kids about many other ways they could break into sports, including through a junior announcer program. Now, he continues to take that message – that there are multiple ways to have an NBA career beyond just playing on the court – to young people he works with.
“You know, every kid’s dream is to make it to the NBA,” Arkwright said. “So for me, I made it to the NBA in a whole other realm. That was super cool to be able to create something new (for the Nuggets) that’s gonna live on forever, it’s still flourishing. If you go to an NBA arena, you start seeing that sports is entertainment. You see sideline reporters there, you see announcers there, you see everything going across the screen. You start to realize that it’s people making those things happen, and my goal is to show kids there’s really so much you can do with sports.”
Currently, Arkwright is back in Michigan, running his own company and foundation. He founded GAMELIKE Sports Group in 2022. Through GAMELIKE, he works with companies and clients to provide strategy, community engagement and impact, creative content, marketing, and other aspects of sports management. He manages athletes, including another Flint native, Monte Morris. He also works with Nike and the Jordan brand to run youth camps throughout Michigan. Most recently, he was in Davison running a camp for Genesee County kids.
He also created a foundation, GAMELIK3 CARES Foundation, which is focused on providing more opportunities to underserved youth through sports. More information about him, his business, and his foundation is available on his Instagram page.
“I moved back to Michigan about a year and a half ago,” Arkwright said. “My family’s here, my daughter’s here, so it made sense for me to move back.”
Although Arkwright is now managing a business and foundation, make no mistake that he was also a great basketball player. He was a star at Carman-Ainsworth High School before playing at St. Clair Community College and leading them to an appearance in the NJCAA national tournament in 2010, and then went on to play two years of Division I college basketball at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Arkwright also played high school basketball in the Flint area in a really competitive era. At Carman-Ainsworth, he played with multiple teammates who played high level college basketball and even professionally. Several others on opposing teams also went on to successful college and pro careers.
Many of those players from that era, like Arkwright, have also found ways to coach or give back to young players in their communities since.
“I know for me, man, I just knew what basketball did for me and, being from Flint, there’s only so much opportunity here,” he said. “At this point in time, we have a lot of people playing professional basketball. You look at Kyle Kuzma, you look at Miles Bridges, Monte, you know, you have a lot of people in a professional realm from Flint that’s able to bring different opportunities back. So once I saw that, it was like, we have a platform now to be able to come back and help these kids. So I run all the Monte camps here. We bring them here free for the kids. My thing is really being able to show, hey, these are people who were once in your shoes, and look where we are now. That’s why we come back and get back to these kids and show them anything is possible.”
An important thing Arkwright likes to talk to young players about is simply the places basketball has taken him. He’s been all over the world through basketball.
“Basketball is its own language,” Arkwright said. “I’ve been to Japan, and they speak a different language than me over there, but the game has its own language. Everybody understands that language. I’ve made so many different friends from different cultures, and I just try to instill that in these kids, the game can take you to meet new people.”
Those relationships also last over long periods of time. Arkwright said he ran into a person he played with when he was around 10-years-old who is now a chiropractor.
“It’s just full circle moments like that for me that are great man,” he said. “I met him playing basketball and we reconnected, I met his family, met his wife. So basketball is just gonna show you so many different avenues.”
Arkwright’s perspective as a parent informs how he works with kids at his camps. He wants to ensure that kids have good experiences, but that parents also feel happy seeing their kids play and compete.
“I’m living in my purpose, man,” he said. “I have a 5-year-old daughter and when she goes to her different events, I’m just in dad mode, but I like to see the instructors just loving what they do. For me it’s like a great feeling to see my kid happy. So for me it is just wanting to do that same thing for kids and parents, seeing the smiles on the kids’ faces and them going home to their parents saying they had a good time, and the parents being fulfilled for what their kid just experienced.”
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