I pondered every word I could say. I asked my father about some of the memories he had of the Orlando Magic to guarantee none of my facts were wrong. I rehearsed each potential joke I thought of making to ensure that at least one of these four strangers would laugh at them. My stomach was in knots during the hours leading up to that first Zoom meeting, one that I still couldn’t believe was happening. Why would they want me? I had just graduated from high school a few weeks prior. The only things I’d written at that point were a few opinion pieces that I published on Medium. And despite my lack of any professional writing experience, the cohosts of the Orlando Magic HQ podcast invited me to join a call that would initiate me as one of three writers for their brand-new website. I could not screw this up.

Within ten minutes, I totally thought I did. “Eighteen???” Anthony Velez and Al Grullon exclaimed in unison when I told them my age. Oh God, I thought. Is this where they realize I’m too young for this? If they did, I wasn’t the only offender. One of the other new writers for the site unmuted himself and said that he, too, recently earned the right to vote. He talked about following the Magic ever since he watched the 2009 NBA Finals as a little kid. He gushed about the Magic and analyzed our favorite basketball team’s roster the way a longtime coach would. 

I sat there in disbelief with each word that came out of his mouth. How could someone that young know that much?

That was most of what I remember about the Zoom call where I met Kieran Patel. It was almost four years ago, and I was too busy trying to quiet my Impostor Syndrome to commit any nonessential information to memory. But I will never forget my first impression of Kieran. Not only was he very clearly a basketball genius, but he talked about the game with this big ol’ smile on his face. Every time Kieran was called on that night, his contagious smile would reach his eyes before he could say a single word. I got used to seeing that smile over the last four years — I can’t think of a time I didn’t see it whenever he spoke. 

That smile was never once formed out of arrogance. It had every right to, though. His knowledge of the X’s and O’s of basketball ran laps around the rest of ours, and we all observed the charisma that earned him a fairly sizable Twitter following up to that point. Everyone else in that Zoom call could see how qualified he was, but Kieran must have had his eyes closed. He wouldn’t stop expressing his genuine gratitude that he was even considered for this role. But he wasn’t going to let this honor overwhelm him. He volunteered for everything — assignments, podcasts, even our graphics because “I’m pretty nice at Photoshop!” 

It was blatant how fired up he was about being a member of Orlando Magic HQ. I felt the heat from his fire from my Macbook speakers, a heat that burned all of my doubts and fears about this new position. If he was ready to get to work, then so was I.

As soon as that Zoom call ended, I made one of the best decisions I’ve ever made: that guy was going to be my rock for our new team. Sure, he may have much more knowledge than me, but maybe being close in age will make it easier to pick his brain. So once the next basketball season started, I started texting him privately. I’d first tell him my general opinions about how the Magic were playing during a given game, all of which were completely unsolicited. Every time, I’d be met with a rapid, enthusiastic response. He’d share his own thoughts with me, many of which I hadn’t considered before. 

Through many hours of reacting in real-time to Magic games with Kieran, I realized that we think about basketball and our favorite team in the same way. Our texts about basketball eventually evolved from conversations between coworkers to topics only close friends would discuss. Our messages contain far too many prayer circles every time Jalen Suggs or Markelle Fultz would land awkwardly after a layup. He would let me pick out the captions for some of his Magic graphics, and he always told me how amazing my suggestions were (they were all terrible). We went from sharing thoughtful, coherent thoughts during games to, “THAT WAS NOT THE SHOT!!!! THAT WAS NOT THE SHOT!!!!!!!!” when games were nowhere close to being decided.

Very quickly, our chats stopped being exclusively about basketball. We bonded over our surprisingly sizable list of mutual friends, and how some of his closest friends in middle school were some of my closest friends in high school. He talked a lot about his longtime girlfriend, and how much he adored her. We admitted how comforting it was to begin this new, yet initially scary opportunity alongside another person new to all of this. We were only kids at the time. Neither of us knew a damn thing about the unfamiliar world of sports writing other than we liked it. And he was a good writer, too. He always provided outstanding analysis that reminded me of how much work I needed to do to catch up to him. So that’s what I did. I studied his articles. I practiced my writing on my own time. I proofread each of my early articles at least three times because I wanted to ensure they’d be as good as his. He made me want to be a better writer, and our strong connection encouraged me to spend most of my freshman year of college chasing that goal.

One of the most wonderful things about Kieran is that I’m far from the only person he connected with. He had this unique ability to find common ground with anyone, and he could build a lifelong relationship with just a shared trait as a foundation. He formed authentic friendships with everyone on Orlando Magic HQ because we loved the Magic just as much as he did. He used that superpower to turn our group of himself, Al, Anthony, Jay Serrano, and me into a band of ball-loving brothers.

That connection was all we had at the time, other than a website, a podcast, and a dream to share our passion for the Magic with everyone. Because of that connection, we have actualized that dream in ways we never expected, and we’ve held that dream strong for almost half of a decade. I truly don’t think we would have reached those heights without Kieran’s love for the rest of us, his passion for what we were doing, and the encouragement he gave us to achieve the dreams that he believed, more than anyone else, we could one day accomplish.

Kieran’s thoughtfulness never wavered as our team expanded. Whenever we’d add a new member to Orlando Magic HQ, Kieran would be one of the first to extend a warm welcome with that big smile of his. His messages would be open if anyone needed his help, advice, or assistance. That was something he was very intentional about. Being a part of our team meant so much to him, and he never wanted to be on bad terms with anyone in it. Because he didn’t just see us as a team. He saw us as a family and hoped that we would see it that way as well. And we do. Every single one of us involved with Orlando Magic HQ sees our group as a family that Kieran Patel will always be a part of.

…

The game may as well have been over before it even started. It would be the second match since rookie sensation Paolo Banchero sprained his ankle. That sprain was the first injury of an NBA career that had gone off to an electric start. He was one of the few bright spots of yet another terrible start for the 3-9 Orlando Magic. Their opponent that night? The Phoenix Suns. The same Phoenix Suns who reached the NBA Finals just two years prior. They had the talent to decimate this Magic team at full strength. And without Banchero? All we could do was prepare our reactions ahead of time for the inevitable November 11, 2022 massacre.

It seemed as though the rest of the Magic community felt the same way. Most of us had already penciled this game as a certain loss and started to count down the days until Banchero would return from his ankle sprain. There wasn’t much fun to talk about leading up to that game. Kieran wouldn’t let that happen, though. To get Magic fans cheering for tonight’s game, he made a bold proclamation. He declared on Twitter that if the Magic were to win this game somehow, he would say goodbye to his long black hair and shave his head. I caught wind of his tweet that night and laughed out loud. I had imagined some alternate, fictional universe where Kieran would spend his next few months as a bald man because the Magic defied all odds to win this game.

The Magic defied all odds to win that game.  

They won it convincingly, too. The Magic scored 114 points and held the Suns to just 97, thanks to a 20-10 night from Wendell Carter Jr. and a fourth-quarter surge from Terrence Ross. They played some of the best basketball I have ever seen them play. The rest of HQ agreed. We all convened in our group chat to celebrate this unbelievable win and express our bewilderment that it came without our rising star. All of us … except Kieran. We tried to lure him out of wherever he was hiding. Jay reminded us of this bet. We filled the chat with his tweet, which was starting to gain significant attention from the community. There was no escaping for him now.

A little over two hours later, we got the text we’d all been waiting for.

“I might just have to [shave my head],” Kieran wrote. “Smh I was seriously cringing when I saw us go up 20.”

Jay reassured him that he lost his beard once because of a bet like this. Anthony joked that he would shave his already bald head in solidarity. But Kieran didn’t need the encouragement. His word was good. He promised to shave his head the following evening and send photos once the deed was done. And he did. Well, kinda. He sent us a photo of his … new buzzcut. It was the shortest his hair had ever been since birth, but we still teased him for it. “That’s a Saturday night cleanup,” Anthony declared. “You cheated,” Al followed. We posted a poll on our Instagram story asking if Kieran’s new hairdo counts as shaving his head, and 59% of respondents told him to go back to Old Stars 52 Barbershop and finish the job.

In his defense, he only said he would shave his head. Not completely shave it. He also genuinely considered his new head shaven, considering what it looked like before. Still, Kieran agreed to another promise: if the Magic won their next two games, he would have a head without a single lock of hair on it. We had a deal, but one that would not be fulfilled. The Magic lost both games, and Anthony would never give Kieran the head-shaving tips that he promised. But I fully believe that if he lost this bet, he would have greeted you with the shiniest head you had ever seen.  

That’s the kind of person Kieran was — a reliable man of his word. One of Kieran’s defining qualities was how strong and loyal of a soldier he was to the people he cared about. This absolutely includes his family at Orlando Magic HQ. Before we even got off that initial Zoom call, he spent a huge chunk of his time writing articles and making graphics. So much effort went into communicating every word he wrote, every opinion he had, and every fact he researched. It showed. His articles were always some of the highest-performing on our site because of how thoughtful they were. 

Kieran’s work ethic was infectious. We all wanted to work hard and grow in our roles because of how much of his heart he put into his copy. The formats of plenty of our analysis articles today, including many of mine, started with his articles. He had such an expressive writing style, too — reading his work helped me grow comfortable inserting my voice into my stories, something I was scared of doing at the time. It’s not a reach to say that in several ways, he shaped the way that we as a group write and talk about basketball. None of that was intentional. He never cared about being a great writer or a superstar journalist. All he cared about was giving Orlando Magic HQ the best content he possibly could create because he loved us so much.

He showed that love for us in other ways as well. Shaving — I mean, “shaving” — his head was just one of the many ways he managed to bring us together. Whenever the Magic made a major trade or signing (all three or four times), Kieran would be the first to hit up the group chat and start a conversation. He and I were frequent guests on Jay’s solo podcast, “From the Nosebleeds to the Studio,” and we almost always stayed for a while afterward to catch up. If you told him that something was going wrong in your life, he’d listen to every word and defend you harder than a prime Dwight Howard.

Within a few years, Kieran went from being my Orlando Magic HQ rock to being my boulder. He was one of the first people I would turn to for anything related to basketball or writing. Positive development on a story? I’d share it with Kieran first. Negative feedback on a published article? I’d ask Kieran if I was crazy. General questions about the state of the Magic? I really wanted to know what Kieran had to say. Because he knew exactly what to say every single time I talked to him, and he was always ready and eager to celebrate with me at my best and console me at my worst.

That’s the magic of Kieran Patel. I’ve met very few people who could read people like he did. He abided by a moral compass that he never once wavered from, and he used his compassion and empathy to hear people how they needed to be heard. That power quickly became something I wanted to emulate. So at some point, I started asking myself a simple question before making most of my decisions: “What Would Kieran Do?” 

And almost always, the answer was, “His best.” 

…

Eighteen points. Seven rebounds. Eight assists. Wendell Carter Jr.’s stat line saved the Magic from losing to the Memphis Grizzlies on October 11, 2022. It was a close one, too — the Magic only won by four points. But thanks to Carter’s heroics on that night, Magic fans flooded Church Street with smiles all over their faces.

The players hadn’t left the arena yet. Some of them needed to talk to the media. This task is usually an unremarkable routine for a player, but Carter Jr.’s outstanding night deserved a break from that monotony. Khobi Price, the Magic’s beat reporter for The Orlando Sentinel at the time, held his phone up to Carter’s face and showed him a picture. Carter looked at the phone and bursted out laughing.

“The internet is undefeated,” Carter then told Price. “That’s fire.” 

The picture? An oversaturated drawing of the 1215 signing of the Magna Carta. The drawing was cropped to where only two people could be seen in the photo. Carter’s face covered one of the bodies, and Wagner’s face covered the other. The gigantic grins on the players’ faces seemed to say the words written on the top and bottom of the image.

“You just lost to the Wagna Carta.”

If you follow the Magic a little too closely, you’ve probably seen this meme before. You might have seen it plastered in the replies of whichever depressing “Final Score” tweet some team’s poor social media administrator had to post after a loss to the Magic. It’s an outstanding meme, one that requires both a hyper-intelligent and unique mind to even come up with.

It should come as no surprise to you by now that Kieran created this meme.

I must admit a weakness of mine: not in a million years would I have ever found a way to connect a professional basketball team to the signing of the Magna Carta. But Kieran could. He had an ultra-specific sense of humor that could make anything sound funny. From his incredible wordplay to his talent for Photoshop tomfoolery, he could send you into a laughing fit of tears no matter what he said or created.

His humor showed in his writing too. Every so often in his articles, he’d interrupt his expert analysis with a quip that would make you exhale a little louder than usual. Over text, he would string together words that you wouldn’t think would ever follow one another, and glue them together with just the slightest bit of sarcasm. He was a very gifted writer and a natural charmer, and a big part of those skills was his ability to make people laugh.

I think the primary thing that fueled Kieran’s sense of humor was his passion. His most creative jokes came at the expense of the interests he cared about most, especially the Magic. His zeal for that team, like his smile, was contagious. Talking about the Magic with him always amplified the emotions I felt toward my favorite basketball team, whether they be good or bad. He just cared that much. 

It wasn’t just the Magic. Kieran had a myriad of personal interests that he loved to share with others. I often felt more in tune with my own hobbies after hearing him speak about his. He’d talk about the important people and things in his life as if they were queens, kings, or castles. Because to him, they were.

Kieran accomplished a lot with us as a member of Orlando Magic HQ. He’s written some of our best articles. He’s made players laugh. He even attended media day one year and made the absolute most of it. The only thing missing from his stunning resume was an NBA game to cover. When we first joined the team, such a thought wasn’t even in our minds. We just wanted to start this new website and take it as far as we could. But at the start of the site’s second year, our hard work reached the Magic themselves: we received credentials to cover their home games. All we needed now were some talented and dedicated reporters to represent Orlando Magic HQ at Amway Center.

Who better to entrust that responsibility to than the talented, dedicated writers who earned those credentials for us?

Kieran and Jay were the very first reporters for our team. We brought along Lewis Fordjour to take our photos. And they all did such a great job covering the games that they did. Their work cemented our site as not just a blog, but the authentic, go-to source for Magic-related information that we always wanted it to be. 

A lot has changed after three years. All for the better. I’m well aware of my bias, but I believe Orlando Magic HQ excels at many different things. Kieran and Jay were both stellar writers when they were with us. Brett James provides outstanding reporting nowadays, and Lew still captures the amazing photos and videos he did two years ago. Anthony and Al still host their fan-favorite podcast, and they’ve been joined by Stephen Cameron’s amazing show, The Close Up. There’s not a single group out there that runs X Spaces like we do, because you’d be hard-pressed to find hosts as captivating and magnetic as Stanley Swanson, Skinny Hardaway, and Bryce Woolley. And we have the great Angel Guzman doing SEO behind the scenes, ensuring that our work is highly accessible to everyone. We are a team — a family — that loves the Magic and just so happens to be very good at talking about it.

But it wasn’t always like this. I’ve said it already, but Kieran, Jay, and I came to Orlando Magic HQ when we were just five guys with a dream. Kieran’s passion, wit, and hard work were essential in turning this dream into our reality. He was the earliest heartbeat of an organization that wanted to succeed, and it’s because of his heart that our site has grown and evolved as much as it has. 

Sometimes, I wonder what our site would look like without Kieran. I shudder afterward and immediately think of something else. That’s a thought I’m glad I never have to think about.

…

I sat across from Kieran at a table inside the Keke’s on Dr. Phillips Blvd last year. This meeting was a long time coming. I had just wrapped up my junior year at Boston University, and he spent much of his time working as a behavioral health technician. It just so happened that July 6 was one of the few days we were both in the same place at the same time.

I cannot remember what I ordered that day. But I do remember envying his chocolate chip waffle. It’s my fault. He told me how amazing Keke’s chocolate chip waffles were while we planned our meet-up. And when that day came, I ate a breakfast that was not as delectable as his waffle looked, all because I did not heed his advice.

I listened to everything else he said that morning, though. And I was thrilled to hear all of it. The move to his new apartment went well, and he was in the final stages of starting a private basketball tutoring business for children. Best of all, almost three years after the date of his proposal, Kieran was getting ready to marry the love of his life, Bryanna. I can still picture the smile he had when he talked about his wedding plans, which were just a few months away at the time. He was so excited that finally, what was perhaps the biggest of his life was about to come true. 

When the end of November 2024 arrived, I began work on a final semester project that I felt Kieran could help with. I asked him if he wanted to be included in this assignment, and he enthusiastically agreed. After weeks of planning around our hilariously divergent schedules, we finally agreed upon a date for me to interview him. Our call lasted for a while that day, but the interview was only about half of it. We spent the rest of it catching up on our semesters. He described how it felt to marry his wife, the honeymoon cruise they were about to go on, and how his job was going. I probably told him about a hundred times to visit me in Boston, a request I later learned that he was genuinely planning to fulfill with Bryanna. There wasn’t a single word spoken about basketball during that phone call. The only things that mattered were what the other was doing.

That was the last time I heard his voice. A short recap of his honeymoon and a “Merry Christmas Eve” text I sent concluded our final conversation. Kieran’s life ended on January 22, right when it seemed like it was starting to begin.

You probably don’t need to be told that grieving is painful, but it is. Not just coming to terms with the fact that someone you care about will no longer smile, laugh, or lose a bet, but there’s a ton of little horrifying things you start to think about too. All the inside jokes you have with that person are now just a series of words that only you will understand. The things that you two once bonded over remind you of the conversations, celebrations, and debates that you wish you could still have with them. All of your responsibilities become impossible to focus on because damn it, you just want to hear your buddy say “I told you so!” after you finally eat that chocolate chip waffle at Keke’s.

But amid all of those realizations, there’s one I don’t think I’ll ever have: I’ve never once thought of Kieran as a man no longer with us. That’s just not true. His body on Earth may be gone, but he’s already found new life in the many souls of those he’s touched. We will never forget the beautiful love and memories he gifted us.

If you’ve ever experienced Kieran Patel, you’ve experienced one of the most loving men you’ve ever seen. He was always so interested in hearing about everything that you were up to. He would come up with special ways to praise your creativity, your outfit, or a project he knows you put your soul into, each new affirmation somehow feeling more authentic than the last. He’d be the first to give a comment on all of your photo dumps on Instagram. He might’ve even given you two if you were wearing a Magic jersey in them.

Whenever you heard Kieran talk about how much he loved someone, you felt compelled to express your love to someone you care about. He made his love for Bryanna evident every single time he spoke her name. That love was evident even when he wasn’t talking about her — the two even had matching Star Wars profile pictures on social media at one point. I wish I asked Kieran for more relationship advice while I could, but I’ve already learned so much about being a better partner to my girlfriend just from watching and listening to him talk about his wife.

It wasn’t just his wife, either. I’ve heard plenty of great things about all the wonderful people in his life — there’s a strong chance I’ve heard your name come out of his mouth. He wanted everyone he spoke with to know how great so-and-so was, because they were never just so-and-so to him. They were always the greatest freaking person in the world, and he truly believed that they were. I hope he knew that’s a phrase that could fit him as well.

Ever since Kieran died, I’ve made it a point to live my own life the way he lived his, both to better myself and to keep his memory alive. But I’ve since discovered a third benefit to doing this: most of my decisions, no matter how difficult they may seem, are now very easy for me to answer. All I need to do is ask that same question I’ve grown familiar with over the last four years: “What would Kieran do?”

And I’d come up with the same answer every time:

His best.

Thank you, Kieran. For everything.

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