The story’s been captured before. The New York City guard is as a quick as they come, able to take anyone off the bounce, but just doesn’t have a reliable-enough jumper, or gets too animated at times, or doesn’t always bring the intensity he needs to make it to the next level. Erick Barkley, Omar Cook, Kenny Satterfield, the list goes on-and-on. For every success story, there are countless failed attempts, which is of course, a relative term in this city.

Sundiata Gaines isn’t your prototypical NYC guard. He didn’t go to St. John’s or Louisville or ‘Nova, or any Big East or ACC school for that matter. The Jamaica, Queens native, who goes by “Yata,” instead opted for Georgia, the same program that just a year before his arrival was rocked by the Jim Harrick scandal, in which the then 65-year-old coach was forced to resign after accusations of academic-fraud surfaced. All in all, the Bulldogs removed themselves from the 2003 SEC and NCAA tournaments, and lost a scholarship for each of the next three years. “They let me know that and it wasn’t gonna restrict my game,” Gaines says looking back on it. “I was promised 35 minutes a game and that did it for me.” But while Gaines averaged double figures his first three seasons and led the team in assists, rebounds, and steals his sophomore and junior campaigns, only in Yata’s junior year did the Bulldogs, a team that hadn’t even seen the weekend of the NCAA tournament since 1985, win an SEC tournament game. “I never lost that much in my life so it was an adjustment, but I just had to keep working on my game so I could make my teammates better,” the unselfish Gaines says.

Gaines’ senior year looked like it would play out the same way. While the 6’1’’ guard who is built like, well, a bulldog, posted career bests in all four categories and made second-team SEC, Georgia finished the year a miserable 4-12 in conference play. But one of the most improbable runs in NCAA history, a miracle as Gaines describes it, was just beginning. The Bulldogs upset Ole Miss, Kentucky, Miss. State and Arkansas to win the SEC tourney, playing two games in one day after a tornado ripped through the Georgia Dome and forced games to be moved to Georgia Tech’s Alexander Memorial Coliseum. Gaines won MVP of the tournament and although Georgia bowed out in the first round of the NCAA’s to a Xavier team that reached the Elite 8 (Georgia actually led by 9 after the first half), the former Molloy high-school star had captured the nation’s eye and finished off a stellar career in which he became the first player in Georgia history to score 1,000 points, grab 500 rebounds and dish off 400 assists.

“I just wanted to be an all-around player. I can score, penetrate, hit my mid-range jumper, rebound, assist, steal,” Gaines says. “I wanted to be able do other things when one thing wasn’t going good.”

Truth-be-told, Yata was even lucky to even be at that point. Losing didn’t even compare to the adversity this warrior faced years before. When he was just four-years old, he was waiting outside a copy store for his brother in downtown Brooklyn. As Yata waited, a man exiting the store tripped and dropped his briefcase, which contained a gun on the inside. The gun went off and a bullet struck the back of Gaines’ neck, knocking the shy Gaines to the ground.

“God gave me another chance to come back and do what I’m doing now,” Gaines says in retrospect. “It was a second chance and I’m trying to make something positive of it.”

Fast-forward. It’s early July and many un-drafted players are getting ready to bust it for five days in the Vegas summer league, hoping they might just catch a G.M.’s eye and land a gig as the twelfth man for a team that will probably be lottery bound again next year. Instead, Yata’s lacing up his appropriately colored white and red Huarache’s, his red shorts drooping down to his shins. The sunlight beams off his face as he tries to avoid getting his shot blocked by a tree-branch that hangs over the court, not in America’s playground but instead in one of New York City’s, the Cage at West 4th street, which is even small for three-on-three, let alone fives.

He’s played against some of college basketball’s best: Chris Lofton, Glen “Big Baby” Davis, the Florida Gators’ fab-five that won back-to-back titles and established itself as one of the best teams in NCAA history. A few past-their-prime New York players shouldn’t pose a challenge.

But Yata comes out of the gate struggling. He seems content to settle for threes, and he clanks his first few from downtown. Yata doesn’t curse, doesn’t scream for all of 6th Ave. to hear like many at West 4th so-often do, doesn’t even look at the refs, but his frustration, the kind the great ones have when they know they’re underachieving, is palpable. He finishes the first half with just six points, sinking only one three-pointer.

During halftime, Yata opts to shoot jumpers by himself instead of regaining his wind on the side, like most players do. The extra shots pay off.

Yata comes out on a mission to start the second half. He immediately bombs-in a three from the right wing. Then he slashes to the basket for two, make it three, his combination of quickness and power overwhelming for defenders. Then with the defense respecting his drive, Yata pulls another from downtown. How this kid barely shot above 30-percent from long distance for his career just doesn’t make sense; this kid can flat-out shoot the ball.
“[At Georgia], I was put in a position where I had to do so much so I took a lot of shots I wouldn’t normally take,” Gaines says. “That’s not an excuse, I still gotta make the shots, but the defenses would key on me.”

There are ten seconds left and the score is knotted at 101. Yata has gone off in the second half, scoring 22 points, connecting on five 3’s. Fans stand four-deep outside the fences at West 4th practically breathing on the players, each one knowing the former CHSAA player of the year is getting the final shot.
The ball is in-bounded on the West-side fence. Yata pauses and burns a few seconds. Down to six. Five. Four. He makes his move, a quick in-and-out to the left that doesn’t shake the defender and with a hand in his face, pulls from 25 feet. The ball has perfect rotation, the seams looking the way a jump-rope does when quickly spun, remarkable considering the distance and the defense. It hits the back rim, jumps in the air a foot above the glass, and as if there was any doubt, comes down and swishes through the abused net.
Yata runs to the other end of the court and his teammates, most of whom he doesn’t even know, maul him like he just advanced the team to the final four.

Two minutes later, it’s as if nothing ever happened. The spectators on the outside have evaporated into the whirlwind of lower Manhattan and Yata, quickly changed, is ready to exit the park. When’s the last time this kid played a game in uniform without doing an interview after?

“The last play was just one-on-one. Coach wanted a high ball-screen, but I knew that wasn’t gonna work ‘cause they’d been doubling me the whole game,” the savvy Gaines says. “I saw my opportunity. That’s a shot I practice every day.”

A shot he practices every day? Even Jordan would’ve been lucky to hit that one-of-four, let alone a kid who says he has no interest in playing overseas and instead will go to the D-league and try to work his way up.

But that’s who Sundiata Gaines is. He doesn’t want to be like everyone else. He thinks every shot he takes will go in and when it doesn’t, it only further motivates him to drill the next one.

Whether he will ever land an NBA job remains to be seen. He is a little small for an NBA point guard and his 60 percent free-throw shooting is a turnoff for G.M.’s. Yata says the adversity won’t phase him.

“I’m ready for anything. You’re always gonna be thrown obstacles in your life and you gotta make through it,” Gaines says. “I’m gonna keep working on my game. If I keep working hard, I think I can make it. G.M.’s have told me I’m talented enough.”

Not bad for a kid who was millimeters away from never even getting the chance.

By Trevor Kapp, trevor.kapp@marquette.edu