Thomas's basketball career was cut short after 4 ACL tears in High School but sophomore year he’d just come off his FIRST surgery & was in dire need of reps on the school’s new expensive shooting machine. His new high school coach was a no-show after he’d promised to open the gym at 5 a.m.

To pass the time, Fields whipped out his iPhone and snapped pictures of his new Jordan Retro 7 “Love of the Game” edition sneakers and posted them to Instagram with the caption that read, “Morning grind.” by this time it’s 6:15am not realizing thats exactly where the idea started to bake.
Thomas thought, “What if I didn’t need a coach to open the gym?” Fields thought. “What if I had my own machine and I ain’t have to depend on nobody?”

“I just started sketching a designing a shooting machine that I could take to the park, I slowly started turning my love for the game of basketball into an obsession for solving this problem."

GRIND, a sports technology brand building products for kids like me... & the first product is a

shooting machine in a duffel bag.

GRIND's culture was instilled by Fields’ first coach, Thomas Henderson, who put a premium on hard work and preparation.

"I was a freshman on varsity & my first High School practice was two months before school started, at 5 a.m!” Fields said laughing.

“Who tf does that? He had an obsessive work ethic, and I loved it. That was the foundation of how I wanted GRIND's products to make people feel. I took it and ran with it.”

However, the company’s mission is to push young inner-city kids to think outside the box, inspiring them to pursue careers in engineering and technology.

The hard truth is that fewer than two percent of NCAA student athletes go on to play professionally.

“I was fortunate because my dad taught me about the business side of things, and I think GRIND can be the inspiration to kids who don’t have dads to teach them,” Fields said.

“I want to show kids that they can come from troubled or poor communities/families that being an engineer and building cool things like this and be really successful while still being involved in sports.