At 64 years old, Rodney Gearding does not understand all the hoopla around this “6-7” business.
Never mind that his grandson, Taylen Kinney, is at the heart of the meme that’s captivated social media and taken on a life of its own with Gen Alpha and Gen Z, launching Kinney to internet immortality. Kinney, or “TK” to those who know him, amassed more than 1 million followers between TikTok and Instagram, all because of a song lyric.
Take those stats, add the frenzy that follows Kinney into every basketball gym he enters, and the launch of Kinney’s “6-7” canned water brand, and you start to understand why Google identifies the 17-year-old as an “internet personality.”
It’s not that Kinney, the No. 17 overall player in the 2026 class according to the 247Sports Composite, minds being well-known online. But lost in all the fuss about his “6-7” renown is that Kinney really cares about basketball. You don’t get scholarship offers from dozens of high major programs — Kentucky, Louisville, Indiana, Oregon, Kansas, Arkansas, Texas and Miami are his finalists — and enjoy midnight home visits on the first day of the recruiting period from coaches like Kentucky’s Mark Pope and Louisville’s Pat Kelsey unless you’ve got game.
But he is undoubtedly a social media star. A brief initiation: In December 2024, rapper Skrilla dropped a new song, “Doot Doot (6 7)” which included the lyric,
“The way that switch brrt, I know he dyin’6-7, I just bopped right on the highway”
(No teens were available for interpretation of this lyric.)
Two weeks later, Kinney was asked to rank his Starbucks drink. He screwed up his brow in contemplation before answering, “six, seven” motioning up and down with his hands, as if weighing two options. His teammates snorted their approval.
The social media team of Overtime Elite, the Atlanta-based basketball league he plays in, recorded the clip and pushed it out on its channels. Over the next month, whenever he got camera time, Kinney worked “6-7” into the video. OTE kept hyping it. Within a month, an internet sensation was born.
In talking to numerous members of the youngest generations, The Athletic has surmised that “6-7” means … nothing. For some, it’s a way to convey indifference, or whatever makes sense to the user. At its core, it’s a song lyric that social media turned into a meme. And like any and everything involving the internet, it’s evolving at a rapid rate. Understanding the cultural zeitgeist is secondary to being part of it: Fifteen-time NBA All-Star Shaquille O’Neal, the father of a 22-year-old, acknowledged he didn’t get it either. But sure, he’d be in a video mimicking it.
@overtime
We really got Shaq doing 67 before GTA 6 😭 @ShaqDieselONeal @Tk #67 #tk #brainrot #shaq #nba
♬ original sound – Overtime
It’s likely you know a teen who uses “6-7” as slang. It’s equally likely they cannot tell you what it means. Even Kinney himself is unclear on why it, and he, have become such a hit.
“It’s just two numbers, ain’t much to say,” Kinney said. “It doesn’t really mean nothing.”
And yet, he can’t escape it.
Said his grandfather, who only recently learned how to text: “You know I’m not into all the rap, when it first started they told me, ‘You won’t understand it, so don’t worry about it.’ And I don’t understand it. But it’s taken over like gangbusters! Even celebrities are doing it! I’m like, good lord, what is going on with these people. But hey, I’ve got the ‘6-7’ water, the shirts …”
“We had no clue what was about to happen when it went viral,” added mom, Mikelle.
On the other line, Gearding laughed. “Even though I don’t understand the half of it, we gotta get on this train!”
Others certainly have. The “6-7” lore has spread to NBA highlights, WNBA news conferences, NFL touchdown celebrations and even one particularly hip senior citizen: None other than 66-year-old Jim Nantz made a “6-7” reference while calling last week’s Packers-Lions game. (Confused? Tony Romo was, too.)
But to Gearding, his grandson is much more than “Mr. 6-7,” as Skrilla himself christened Kinney.
In Gearding’s mind, Kinney is still the little boy eager to bus tables at the family restaurant, River Front Pizza in Covington, Ky., who would charm customers with smooth dance moves and flirtatious glances. He stocked a piggy bank full of tips, often collecting more cash than some of the most seasoned servers. He’d do anything to earn a stranger’s smile: ham it up during restaurant rush hour, crack a joke, sling a pass to a wide-open teammate and encourage him to drain the shot. Last December, he used some of his Adidas name, image and likeness money to hand out $250 gift cards to underprivileged kids in his hometown.
“He’s outgoing,” Gearding said, “but he’s never been big-headed.”
Taylen Kinney and his grandfather, Rodney Gearding, are embracing where the “6-7” trend takes them. (Courtesy of the Kinney family)
Kinney fell hard in the fourth grade. Wearing new Jordan 11s, he hung 54 points on a team full of sixth-graders — “Tay’s always played up,” his grandpa bragged — hitting the game-winner and relishing the mob of teammates who shrieked and celebrated around him.
Growing up in Newport, Ky., about 100 miles northeast of Louisville, Kinney tried other sports. Football didn’t stick because “I wasn’t really liking the contact” and baseball “was way too boring.”
That visual of a little kid sitting crisscross-applesauce in the outfield picking dandelions? That was Kinney, who used to balance his glove on his head for laughs.
So he dedicated himself to hoops, rising early to get shots up with his stepdad before classes started. He’d go to school, go to practice and then stay late to shoot more. He started as point guard for the varsity team as an eighth-grader and told his family, “I don’t ever wanna lose this spot. Basketball is what I wanna do.”
After playing his first two years of high school at Newport, Kinney moved to Atlanta to join OTE, the prep school basketball factory featuring more than 100 of the nation’s best prospects. In the past few years, OTE has produced lottery picks like Amen and Ausar Thompson, Frenchman Alex Sarr and former Kentucky standout Rob Dillingham. Kinney thought OTE would “push me to the next level.” But his first two weeks, he wondered what he’d gotten himself into. His parents assured him he could come home.
“I was playing in a shell, then I just started playing like me,” Kinney said. “Shoot, the rest is history. When I found out who was on my team, I got real comfortable with those guys, settled in, became myself again.”
In 20 regular-season OTE games last year, Kinney averaged 20.1 points, 5.0 assists, 4.0 rebounds and 2.3 steals. Thursday, he was one of the main attractions when more than 100 college coaches and NBA scouts visited OTE for its annual combine, observing Kinney and his teammates go through drills, play three-on-three and five-on-five.
Kinney has grown 2 inches and added 3 (meaningful) pounds over the summer, checking in at 6 feet 3, 188 pounds, according to coach Corey Frazier. It’s a minimal boost that Frazier said could make a major impact for a player who is “the last in a breed of facilitating-first point guards.”
“I’ve never known TK to be a selfish player,” Frazier said. “Now, there’s that spurt where he can get the ball at the end of the game and take over, make 10 shots in a row, if that’s what you need. But it’s because he’s spent the first three quarters feeling out the other nine players on the court and making the extra play for his teammates.”
Kinney estimates that he spends at least five hours a day in the gym. He spends maybe 15 minutes on his TikTok and Instagram pages, letting OTE’s social media handle most of the content creation and posting.
He doesn’t respond to every message, but sees the ones from kids telling him they discovered him because of the “6-7” trend and took up hoops “because they wanna be like me.” Internet fame can be exhausting, but “the real heartwarming messages like that, they get to me.”
Gearding is often struck speechless when new patrons show up at River Front Pizza and explain, “We came here because we love TK and want to support his family!”
Kinney and his business team know there’s money to be made via his online presence. He leverages his influence and capitalizes on potential “6-7” marketing opportunities: It’s why he started the canned water brand — launched on June 7, of course. (Its powers are unverified, but at least one youth hooper claims that after drinking “6 7” water, he scored eight points in 30 seconds, and hit the game-winner.) No wonder it already has a waitlist, and 101,000 Instagram followers.
“Mr. 6-7” is almost like an online alter ego Kinney can embrace when he’s feeling entrepreneurial. But day to day, his life is about “keeping the main thing, the main thing.”
Kinney is anxious to be done with the recruiting process, and likely to make a college decision by the end of September. In the last month, he’s taken official visits to KU, Indiana and Oregon.
His ideal situation: “I wanna play pretty fast, with ball screens, letting the guards rock.”
His mom would love for him to be closer to home in Newport. But she’s made peace with the idea that she might be traveling long-distance to watch him play. She’s used to that.
“I drive down to Atlanta, to OTE, almost every weekend,” she said. “It’s about six, seven hours.”
She paused, realizing her word choice.
“I didn’t mean to do that!” she cried, while grandpa cackled on the other line. “No pun intended!”
(Photo courtesy of Mike Lawrence / Overtime)
