At his gym, Peter Danyliv is floating atop a sea of Yeezys, Kobes and Jordans for his 330,000-plus Instagram following to admire.
One particular pair helps explain the rise of a basketball trainer sought out by pros and amateurs who’s as much of a respected instructor as he is a social media sensation. There, in one of the Instagram slides, stands Danyliv with Allen Iverson’s signature shoe in each hand. One was the AI Answer IX. The other was the AI Answer X — his first-ever pair of basketball shoes.
These are the kicks that tell his story. One that began in Ukraine, brought him to America as a teen, shattered his childhood basketball dreams and birthed new ones.
Both iconic sneakers hold a special place in Danyliv’s heart. They represent a humble beginning and take him back to a time when he didn’t have much. Before the large Instagram following, which has become one of his favorite tools for showcasing his 90/10 Training brand. Before cracking north of one million followers on TikTok, an app that Danyliv uses to share informative, motivational and humorous videos for millions of basketball consumers across the world. And surely before he began running a nationally known basketball training business from the comfort of Immanuel Lutheran Church in Lawrence, Kansas, where some of the nation’s elite college players like Luka Garza, Mark Mitchell, Christian Braun and Marcus Garrett dedicate their time and resources to progress as players.
Before all that, there was just a pair of Reeboks and a dream — things that would play a significant role in creating the brand that is 90/10 Training.
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Danyliv’s introduction to the game of basketball was hardly unique. Casually taking in a local college’s open gym while alongside his grandfather is what initially sparked his interest in hoops. But seriously pursuing basketball as a career path and doing so in the United States? Well, how that came about was certainly unusual, and all the credit goes to two DVDs: NBA Street Series Ankle Breakers and the AND1 Mixtape collection.
“[Ankle Breakers] had Stephon Marbury, Steve Francis, Allen Iverson, T.J. Ford,“ Danyliv said. “…it was the first time I had ever seen anything that has to do with the NBA and America. Ever since I was introduced to that around age 11 or 12, I really fell in love with the game more.”
A dream rarely becomes reality without some sort of action, and in Danyliv’s case, Ukraine native Boris Vukobrat’s action is what set everything off. Danyliv was 15 years old at the time Vukobrat served as an international scout for the Minnesota Timberwolves. Vukobrat would regularly host basketball camps in Kyiv for the European youth to attend at the time, and Danyliv made his way to one. Inspired by the open gyms he’d consumed and the basketball films he’d watched over the years, Danyliv put his skills on full display. Vukobrat noticed, was impressed with what he’d seen and connected Danyliv with a high school basketball program at Westlake Prep in Florida, where a full scholarship materialized shortly after. Without hesitation, Danyliv was off to America.
But Danyliv’s basketball journey quickly went from a feel-good Hollywood movie to a drama-filled one with obstacles that would test his love for the game.
By his senior year at Westlake Prep, Danyliv had mostly seen his college basketball interest fall by the wayside thanks to a career-threatening knee injury that required a microfracture surgery — the same operation that threw daggers into the careers of NBA greats like Brandon Roy and Greg Oden.
The injury left Danyliv without a Division I basketball offer after high school and led him to a junior college in Oklahoma. He held onto hope that his knees and basketball career would last a bit longer, but as time went on, it became apparent nothing would heal Danyliv’s body in a way that would allow him to perform up to his standards. Like Roy and like Oden, Danyliv’s microfracture devoured another promising basketball career in its early stages. And although he knew the ball would stop bouncing one day, this kid chased his dream halfway around the world and wasn’t ready for it to end so soon.
After acknowledging his playing career was all but over, Danyliv knew he needed to find another way to finish school and also stick around the game he loved so passionately. That prompted him to take matters into his own hands. Danyliv exchanged emails with several NAIA schools, trying vigorously to latch on at a four-year program. Eventually, he made his way to Ottawa University in Kansas, not as a student-athlete but as a student-assistant coach.
There, his life would forever change.
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Danyliv quickly realized how little went into being a student-assistant coach. He had minimal say in the day-to-day management of the team — practice plans, input on plays, skill development — and mainly spent time running errands for coaches. And while Danyliv was beyond thankful for the opportunity Ottawa had given him — allowing him to come in on scholarship, no less — he just knew there was more he could offer the program than assisting with the coaching staff’s day-to-day chores. He owed it to the program to become more valuable and was on a mission to figure out what that value was. So, Danyliv made it a priority to hang around and make himself available outside of practice. He began working out guys on the team who wanted additional reps and slowly adding his own flair.
“I was doing some B.S. cone drills, some tennis ball drills, some heavy ball stuff,” Danyliv said. “I had no clue what I was doing. But guys seemed to like it, and they were working out hard, so they felt like they were getting better. And that’s how everything kind of started for me.”
The workouts remained team-specific until the university’s chaplain, Briley Rivers, took note. Rivers, blown away with the amount of time and energy Danyliv was putting in during his free time to help the student-athletes, asked if he would be willing to do individual training with his 10-year-old son. Danyliv happily agreed and officially had his first client. The reward for his services was $10 per hour, twice a week — a price that now ranges between $55 and $125 per hour, depending on the specific types of workouts (individual or group) and the frequency of them.
A few training sessions led to a few more until Danyliv’s calendar was packed with new clients and they outgrew the facilities at the university. Rivers, appreciative of Danyliv and all he was doing, went out of his way to find him a small gym located inside a local church. It was a bit outdated but came with perks that more than made up for it — namely 24/7 access and no usage fees.
It took a lot of DIY renovation to get it in shape: scrubbing and putting new finishes on the hardwood floors (for both visual aid and performance enhancement), installing new backboards and rims and rehabilitating the walls surrounding the court.
When all was said and done, Danyliv and his business partner, Ashley Beets, ran a successful basketball training gig at the Ottawa-based church for two years. Beets and Danyliv originally met when she’d brought her son in for training while Danyliv was still in his student-assistant coach role at Ottawa University. Like Rivers, the Chaplain mentioned previously, Beets was impressed enough to want to help. Once Danyliv finished school, she helped him set up the basketball training business that became 90/10 Training, a business they’d put their all into.
“We put so much of our heart and soul into making that a beautiful place that kids wanted to come into and wanted to work hard,” Beets said. “We took so much pride in the fact that the two of us legitimately did it ourselves.”
But the church’s congregation began to dwindle. Fewer and fewer people were attending worship services, and dollars stopped coming in and the doors to the church closed completely, leaving Danyliv and Beets in scramble mode to find a new home for their growing partnership. They briefly set up shop at a recreation center near the University of Kansas, but that lasted less than a year. Between volleyball and basketball practices occupying bits and pieces of the 14-court facility and pickup games taking place on others, it was nearly impossible to orchestrate a proper distraction-free workout.
Danyliv was losing hope by the day. His patience dwindled. Then he stumbled upon another incredible blessing when a friend suggested the basketball gym at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Lawrence.
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For Danyliv, the idea of this church that he’d routinely driven by every day having a functional basketball court where he could run 90/10 Training felt impossible. Nevertheless, he called the church, set up a tour, and was, well, blown away.
“I’m thinking carpet floors, bad backboards, or something small and not very good,” Danyliv said. “When the lady at the church met with us and showed us around, my jaw just dropped. [It was a] state-of-the-art gym with a regulation-size backboard, backboard padding, mats on the wall, a lounge room with a big couch and a TV. It had a kitchen, a storage room, AC and heat.”
Basketball is religion in Kansas, after all, so it made all the sense in the world that a house of worship would provide the best facilities around.
The church’s proximity to Kansas’ campus boosted Danyliv’s business by expanding its clientele in Lawrence and Topeka. But more importantly, it was a move that fully opened the door to accessing the Jayhawks men’s basketball team, even if it would mean mending a past relationship with the program.
One year earlier Danyliv had trained then-Jayhawks Marcus Garrett and Sam Cunliffe at the team’s practice gym, which he didn’t know was against NCAA rules at the time. A member of the Kansas staff had to be the bad cop regarding the situation, but the connection between the two sides would smoothen out over time thanks to a previously formed bond with the Selden family.
Wayne Selden is the former Rock Chalk star turned NBA player most college fans are familiar with. His younger brother, Anthony, had taken up training with the 90/10 crew back during Danyliv’s time in Ottawa. One day, little bro brought big bro to a training session to get some work in with Danyliv. Acknowledgment of the workout was shared and later reposted by Wayne on social media, which immediately caught the eye of many other Kansas players.
@peterdanyliv WAYNE SELDEN IS A BEAST😤#basketball #foryou #highlights #familytime #weekendtrip #sidehustle #itcostthatmuch
“Ever since we posted that workout on our Instagram, and then Wayne reposting it, we started getting other guys that were on the team to reach out,” said Danyliv. “LeGerald Vick and Silvio [De Sousa] were reaching out asking [me] to work them out. And that’s kind of how it started. Then, when we moved to Lawrence, one of my first full-time guys was Silvio, and then after Silvio, we started having Marcus Garrett and then Jalen Wilson.”
A simple social media repost marked the initial breakout for Danyliv and Beets’ 90/10 brand during the 2010s. Instagram and TikTok have since taken the basketball training brand to new heights in the 2020s. Ironically, the breakout arose from another one of the team’s fork-in-the-road moments.
“The first things we were posting when we first started using Instagram was nothing but players,” said Beets. “It wasn’t Peter at all, he was hardly in any of the videos that we posted. It was all about the players and the moves that they were working on, the skill that they were building, and it wasn’t actually about [Danyliv] teaching as much as it was about them learning.
“That kind of started to change for us with social media absolutely blowing up right around the time of COVID. We couldn’t get anybody in the gym and everything that we had to film to continue to stay relevant had to be Peter. It had to be him teaching and showing what it is that he knew, and it had to be his face, his likeness and his voice. That started to change things for us.”
Originally hesitant and totally against the idea of sharing his work with the world, Danyliv is now fully embracing the concept. He understands the vision, and with his social media posts, he’s influencing an audience and a generation of hoopers in the same way the former NBA icons and streetball legends did for him. In doing so, the business is running to him. Danyliv’s earned access to shoe and apparel companies he’d only dreamt of sporting as a kid, has formed a social media following that enables his work and message to reach millions of basketball fans worldwide, and now has access to the world’s most high-profile athletes — collegiate and professional.
Needless to say, the doors to the Jayhawks’ basketball facilities are open once again for the 90/10 crew. You can look up and down past Kansas rosters and find many players who excelled at the collegiate level before moving onto the professional ranks — many of which have trained with Danyliv during off-seasons. The list of clients is seemingly endless, including former Kansas national champions Christian Braun and David McCormack and current Jayhawk standouts Gradey Dick and Jalen Wilson.
So when you revert back to Danyliv’s Instagram page and find him lying in a pile of shoes, see videos of him training NBA players or doing any of the fun things his lifestyle provides, don’t forget his story. Think about a guy who left the comforts of home to go out and chase a dream. Think about a guy who continuously pulled himself up and bet on himself each time the going got tough. Think about a self-made basketball icon who’s embracing the way basketball training and social media should coexist.
