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At least, that’s his aspiration — in his basketball off-time, Garner trades baselines for bass lines as a legitimate song producer, constructing beats from several music genres for local artists. Along with partner Mike Frank, a junior at Blake High, they comprise a beat-making duo called ‘‘The Rebels”. This isn’t just a hobby, either — Garner’s backdrops will soon be featured on the album, ‘‘Full of Money”, forming the rhythm behind the works of rappers and close friends John Forbes and Justin Grenaway.

At Springbrook, he’s a basketball star. At home, he’s D.J. C.J.

‘‘We do a range of things from hip-hop, to R&B, to say, rock,” Garner said. ‘‘We’re sample-based producers at the moment, so we sample old-school stuff or whatever we like, but put our own twist on it. Everything’s working towards the album — we have a few songs in the transformation process.”

For now, Garner and Frank create all their works in-house, though there are already lofty expectations to buy out studio time and further advance their craft. Make no mistake about it, however — basketball is Garner’s first love. And all the time and hard work he’s put into it, six days a week year-round, has paid off in dramatic fashion for the 17-3 Blue Devils.

On a team featuring new starters at every position, he has been the dominant scoring force allowing Springbrook to post the second-best record (B-CC was 17-2) in the county through Monday. Garner has posted some monstrous numbers, including a 100-point, three-game stretch against Walter Johnson, Sherwood and Blake earlier in the season. And in back-to-back rematches with Sherwood and Blake last week, he averaged 27 per night.

The eruptions may have taken the rest of the county by storm, since Garner received only spot-duty as a sophomore last year. But they only mildly startled Blue Devils head coach Tom Crowell, who knew what his 5-foot-10 lightning bug could do well before the season began in December.

Though he didn’t know he would score this much, the player he once referred to as ‘‘Mini Iverson” caught his and several others’ eyes long ago. In fact, Crowell is shocked more by Garner’s budding musical ambitions.

‘‘I do know he can talk very fast, I thought maybe he could be a [rapper],” Crowell said. ‘‘But no, the only way it’s been a surprise to me is how fast it’s come. From what I’d seen in summer league and what other good players in Springbrook’s past tell me, like [1995 alum] Tryrian Ridges and his brother Tommy — they would always tell me ‘You better keep an eye on that kid, he might be special.’ C.J. still has to work on a few things, but he’s special in the open court. He’s just done a great job for us.”

The speed at which he talks is comparable to his speed on the court, and that’s the first thing anyone one notices when seeing Garner play. He has tremendous quickness, and can strike in the blink of an eye.

In the Blue Devils’ matchup against Whitman two weeks ago, the Vikings scored the first two buckets of the game. But the lead was short-lived. Garner erupted for 10 of Springbrook’s 14 unanswered points, scored 20 in the first half, and picked up six steals in leading his team to an easy 19-point victory.

It all left Whitman coach Chris Lun in awe.

‘‘Man, he just makes things happen,” Lun said. ‘‘He’s just so quick, a very good player. We’re trying to get our guys to attack like he does.”

His play has already garnered (pun intended) interest from several NCAA Division I colleges — James Madison, Loyola, and George Mason, whose current leading scorer is 2004 Gazette Player of the Year and Springbrook grad Folarin Campbell. If his production keeps up, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to see Garner succeed the Patriot junior in the green and gold.

Currently, however, he gets to enjoy his time in the blue and white on and off the court. Aside from his work with ‘‘The Rebels”, he collaborates on rap productions with Grenaway, who also is a junior at Springbrook. Grenaway, who goes by the moniker ‘‘J. Cash”, grew up playing basketball with Garner, and the two officially teamed up creatively this past summer.

In a sense, he’s somewhat the alternate Garner — basketball is his first passion, but at this stage, his mind is on the music. He believes he and his longtime friend will be signed on to a record company within two years.

‘‘Me and him, we just decided, ‘Let’s just have fun with this rap thing,’ and it basically started from there,” said Grenaway, who notices the Kanye West influence on Garner’s beats. ‘‘C.J. makes really good beats — they’re really different [in that] he’s influenced by lot of different types of beat-makers. I’ll just call him, and tell him pretty much the mood I’m feeling and he’ll get to work on creating something for me.”

Even if it comes second for him, Garner has a lot of people counting on him musically. And he certainly does on the basketball court too. With just a week left in the regular season, Springbrook is counting on its No. 1 option for the energy it will require to bring home its first state championship since 1988. Luckily, as Crowell says, ‘‘C.J. never gets tired.”

He’ll have no time to, now and for a long time. Presently, he’s just a high school junior. But in the near future, he could be signed on to a Division I college basketball scholarship. Or a record deal.

No one can predict the future, but right now, C.J. Garner’s stock is pretty high. So high, that like Kanye, he could ‘‘touch the sky.”