My Life, My Fight Page 7

  We met Hawke’s Bay again in the final at the end of the week. This time we went in with a chip on our shoulder and ended up winning comfortably.

  A few months later at Nationals we progressed steadily through pool play and into the finals without any real challenges. After a tense final (are they ever not tense?) we were the Under 17 National Champions. It was the perfect reward for every early-morning and late-night scrimmage we’d gone through. I was named Most Valuable Player at the tournament, which was a genuine surprise because I’d always thought MVP went to a standout player on a team. I considered myself purely a role player in our team, but I guess when you’re 6′9″, you have to be pretty useless to not have a good-looking stat sheet by the end of a weeklong tournament.

  What mattered more to me about winning the championship and being MVP was that it validated all the work I was putting in. I hope that if we’d come in ninth at that tournament and I didn’t play that well I would have still pursued a life in basketball, but I can’t say for sure. I’m just lucky I never had to find out. My first full year of training with Kenny and I was a national champion and tournament MVP. It was about as much proof of progress as I could have hoped for, and it told me that I was on the right track and surrounded by the right people.

  After Nationals the rest of the guys took a break from training together to concentrate on their various school teams, as the season was still ongoing. I had no time to rest. If anything, I came back from Nationals wanting to work even harder so that by the next year I could blow everyone out of the water.

  Everyone else in the team went to public schools and played in the top basketball grade, while I was two grades down playing against some quite shambolic teams because I was at a private school that just didn’t have the same pool of basketball talent. It was good for me, though, because it forced me to develop some leadership skills. Instead of being able to just work on my own game and let everyone else around me work on theirs, I suddenly had so-called expertise that my Scots teammates lacked. Having to teach a drill or technique to someone else is honestly the best way to fully understand it yourself. Playing for a not so great school team was a blessing in disguise because it broke up my season and offered some variety in the style of play I was facing.

  For everyone in that Wellington team, though, winning Nationals every year was the number-one priority, no exceptions. Because of how the age groups are set up—under 15, under 17, under 19, and under 21—every second year it’s common to have a different team. Most of us were born in the same year so we got to stay together in the same rep team for four years. After winning Nationals in 2009, we knew we had to win every tournament now. And that’s exactly what we did.

  From 2009 to 2012, we lost only one game, against Hawke’s Bay in that first regional tournament. From there on we were undefeated and ended up with four national titles, plus I walked away with four MVP trophies. The bond that we had as a team was the strongest I’ve had with any team, including the Thunder.

  Half of us came from families without money, which meant we fundraised a lot to pay for travel costs and tournament fees. Debbie soon had a list of go-to businesses who would effectively hire the whole team to work an event. She started working with Bernice, another team mum, and together they became the ultimate managing duo. We marshaled cycling events, ran stalls on the weekends, and held car washes and auctions right throughout the year so that once the tournaments came around we had no costs. It was work, but it never felt like it because we were hanging out with our mates off the court. It didn’t matter if you could afford to pay the fees without fundraising; every single player worked those weekends to bring the costs down for their teammates who had less. No matter how good a team is on the court, if they can’t work together and get along off the court, there’s going to be problems.

  Only now when I stop to think about it do I realize that there were probably times when our fundraising didn’t cover all the costs of a tournament, particularly if it required a flight to get there. But even though I had no money, I never felt as if I was in danger of not being able to go. The only explanation for this is that if there were any extra expenses, Kenny, Blossom, Bernice, or the Webbs looked after them without telling me. I was a big part of the team so it makes sense they would want me at the tournaments, but at the same time, quietly paying for someone else’s kid to play basketball is just one of the many things that people did to help me get to the NBA. I’ve never brought it up with Debbie or Bernice, because I know they would either deny it or avoid the question. It was just something people did and didn’t need to have discussed. I may have had nothing to my name, but I was always provided for by others, and then some.

  The tournaments were always the highlights of the year. If you’re reading this and you have kids, please sign them up to play at least one team sport. Spending a week living with friends who shared a common passion and goal was crucial to my development, both as a player and as an empathetic person.

  Traveling to tournaments in New Zealand meant squashing into vans and driving up to 12 hours to get to the host city. Once there, accommodation was either a motel or a holiday park and campground. Some teams would stay on marae to save money, which meant everyone slept in sleeping bags on rows of mattresses on the floor. It was virtually impossible to have time alone, but no one really wanted it, because why would you wander off by yourself during a weeklong sleepover with your friends?

  Our team went through our awkward teenage years together, which meant there was a lot of dick swinging and dick measuring (literally), but it was also the first time I had close friends to talk to about things I was too scared or embarrassed to ask the adults in my life. When you’re a kid and you have nothing, your only assets are your relationships. Through Wellington basketball I was made rich with friends who will always be my brothers, even though we don’t see much of each other these days. We had each other’s backs on and off the court.

  The best example of this was when we were out of town for a tournament and a group of us walked by a house where some Mongrel Mob gang members were having a party. They yelled something at us that I couldn’t hear but which Victor could. Victor yelled back at them and next thing I knew they were marching onto the street looking like they were going to smash all of us. When they got closer I think they realized how big Chris and I were so they stopped, spat at us, and went back to their drinking. If they’d wanted to fight they would have nailed the lot of us, and I would have been the first to go down. I stood there, scared, but knowing that none of the boys would run away, because you never leave your teammate, whether you’re on the court or off. That stays with me, as strong as ever, to this day.

  More than titles, more than money, what really counts is the confidence you have in your teammates, and that they have in you.

  7.

  MAKE OR BREAK

  I like being the underdog because the only way is up. I relish people doubting me because being able to prove them wrong is so damn satisfying. Luckily for me, there were plenty of people to prove wrong in 2010 and 2011, the busiest, most stressful years of my life. And before you mutter “so far,” I honestly don’t think I will experience another period that is as busy and important as those two years were for me. If school and sport count as work—and I believe they do—then I was working 16-hour days. With at least two trainings a day and games every second day on top of school and homework, I didn’t have time for anything else.

  At the end of 2010 I went along to a Junior Tall Blacks training camp because Kenny was the coach and I was able to go without paying the fee. That’s right, in New Zealand promising young basketballers have to pay to trial for national teams. Kenny had invited the coach from the University of Pittsburgh, Jamie Dixon, to watch and scout for potential recruits for his NCAA Division I side. I performed well at the camp and Jamie was interested right off the bat. We had a talk and arranged for him to come and see me train a bit more in 2011. But he made it clear on that first visit that he wante
d me to go to Pitt on a scholarship.

  I never ended up playing for Kenny’s Junior Tall Blacks team. I was obviously good enough—a national MVP should be able to make the junior national team—but I couldn’t afford it. To represent New Zealand as a young athlete costs a lot of money, not just in basketball but in all sports. Being selected for an age-group national side to play in an international tournament would cost each player thousands of dollars. I knew of players who went on every trip, at least once a year, because their parents could easily afford to pay for each tournament. But there were a lot of players, most of them brown, some of them the best in the country, who never once represented New Zealand because they couldn’t afford to trial, let alone to fly overseas. I hate to think how many guys I played with who could have had careers in basketball if they’d just been given more help (like I was) when they were younger.

  While I didn’t mind the hours of training and gym workouts, I was finding it harder and harder to be enthusiastic about schoolwork. I couldn’t figure out why I had to spend at least six hours a day doing things that wouldn’t matter if I succeeded in becoming a professional basketball player. I want everything I do to be in pursuit of a greater goal and, by the start of my final year at Scots, I wasn’t seeing how school was helping me reach my goal.

  But while the end goal was never to get a scholarship, it was a required step in continuing to improve my game, and therefore schoolwork was a vital area that I was neglecting. That is, until Blossom sat me down and gave it to me straight. Without good grades, I wouldn’t get a scholarship. Without a scholarship I wouldn’t get to America. And if I didn’t get to America, there wasn’t much chance of me getting to the NBA. That was all it took. Just a no-nonsense explanation of why I needed to succeed in school and my attitude changed completely.

  We found out which requirements I’d need in order to study at a Division I college in America and realized that I was taking all the wrong subjects at school. In my first full year at Scots, I didn’t progress much in the classroom. Where I did progress was in catching up socially and integrating into the school community. So, to no one’s surprise, my grades weren’t very good that year. A lot of papers I didn’t achieve and the ones I did were the unit standards, which were usually easier to pass. In 2010 I was a Year 12 student and started to be more comfortable in the classroom, but I still struggled a lot, especially with written subjects like English. So I took all the classes that students take when they know they’re not good in the classroom, like physical education, computing, and tech.

  It soon became clear that I couldn’t keep taking the subjects I wanted and be accepted into a Division I college. For the first time in my life I started having regrets. Why hadn’t I worked harder when I first got to Scots? Why had I never gone to school in Rotorua? Why had I acted like school wasn’t as important as basketball?

  The principal at Scots spoke to one of the English teachers, Ms. Milne, and asked if she would tutor me to get my grades up. She said yes (I’m starting to wonder if anyone ever refused to help me) and would come to meet me every study period for an extra lesson.

  It wasn’t easy. I might have never missed a training and always put in 100 percent on the court, but the same could not be said for my work in the classroom. Ms. Milne, Ms. Parks, and Ms. Esterman, the librarian, were my three school mums and they had their work cut out for them. To get my literacy credits I had to complete a reading log, which meant I had to start reading.

  Two years earlier I had met Ms. Esterman in the library and she had asked me what books I liked to read. I said, “Where’s Wally?” That’s where my interest in reading was at. She found a Where’s Wally? book from the primary school library and we went through it together before she gently suggested that I try out a short novel. From there it was very slow but steady progress until in 2011 she handed me Catch Me If You Can, a story of a con artist, made famous by its movie version featuring Leonardo DiCaprio. I carried that book around with me everywhere. But I hardly read it. Ms. Milne would make jokes about me always having that book in my hand; I had every intention of reading it, but most of the time I’d get through half a page then get distracted by something more interesting, for example, a tumbleweed blowing across the rugby field. Even the title Catch Me If You Can became a joke among the teachers, who had to chase me around the school trying to get me to complete their assignments. It wasn’t that I didn’t take schoolwork seriously, it was just so much harder for me to work with my brain than with my body.

  I loved math and classics. Math, because everything is either right or wrong, and once I understood a formula I could sit all day solving problems and getting a kick out of each correct answer. Classics I loved because of the stories. The best mark I ever got in school (besides the PE physical that I aced) was a merit in a level 2 classics assignment. The learning material was pretty much the same as all the other assignments that year, but the difference was that we had to deliver our work as a seminar. I knew what story I wanted to teach the class about, so I went up in front of them and told it. I spoke for 15 minutes with no notes, no cue cards, nothing. My issue was never that I didn’t understand ideas and concepts, it was that I couldn’t write them down.

  When the principal came into the common room the next week and announced that Steven Adams, the guy who could barely read when he started at Scots, had gotten a merit for his classics seminar, I’d never been more proud. All my mates were shocked, and I played it off as if I just got lucky, but in my mind I was strutting around like a peacock.

  Ms. Milne knew that I worked better verbally, so we went through most of our tutoring sessions having conversations about things I was reading, rather than her making me write down a bunch of answers. I requested a reader–writer for exams, someone who sits with you and writes out your words for you. Some people might consider having a reader–writer to be a bit embarrassing or something to be ashamed of, but I didn’t hesitate in asking. When there was a mix-up and one wasn’t there for an exam, I didn’t start until she arrived.

  I am proud of my strengths, but I am also aware of my weaknesses. I wasn’t actually dumb—I understood the concepts and knew what to say—but barely going to school until I was 14 meant my writing was a hindrance in timed assessments. I think that if you have something you’re not confident with, own it and accept the extra assistance when it’s available. If I had refused to be humbled by all those who could help me, I’d still be sleeping on a mattress in Rotorua.

  Ms. Milne wasn’t just my tutor during her breaks and after school, she also played the role of part-time driver. If we had a lesson after school and I needed to get to the gym to meet Blossom, which was every day, I’d wait by Ms. Milne’s car and ask if she would be going through town on her way home. She almost always was—or at least that’s what she said. She would drive me into town in her tiny RAV4 with no leg room and drop me off at the gym. I’ve never been one to let pride get in the way of a free ride.

  To everyone’s surprise but my own, spending so much more time at school didn’t take anything away from my basketball. I was still training every morning with Kenny, although my new training buddy was a guard called Jah Wee, who had the biggest hops of anyone I’d met but wanted to work on his court reading. He played in the Wellington rep team and lived not far from Blossom and Kenny.

  Kenny would be outside Jah Wee’s house at 5:20 a.m. each morning and if he wasn’t waiting outside, Kenny would drive away. For two years, Jah Wee was always waiting outside. Then they would come by Blossom’s house to pick me up and I would never be outside, so Jah Wee would have to come inside and get me. I can’t count the number of times I woke up to Jah Wee standing over me, telling me to hurry up.

  As I started to get some media attention later that year, reporters loved to mention that I would have to be up and standing outside by 5:30 a.m. every morning. In reality I was given a lot of passes from Kenny, and Jah Wee was the only one who risked missing a training by sleeping in because no one was going t
o go inside to wake him up. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to train; I’ve just never been a morning person. One of the best things about playing basketball for a living now is that I never have to wake up at 5 a.m. I start work at 9 a.m. like a normal person.

  During one training, Kenny casually mentioned that he had been speaking to Pero Cameron, a former Tall Black and current coach of the Wellington Saints, the city’s team in the National Basketball League. Cameron apparently wanted me to play for his team in the 2011 season.

  Some of us in the Wellington rep team had been training occasionally with the Saints, but I thought it was just to get in some extra hours in the gym, not to actually play for them. The training had been a massive step up and improved my game heaps in a short time as a result of matching up against much stronger and more experienced players. The Saints had guys like Nick Horvath and Kareem Johnson in their squad, who had both played basketball in America. Nick had won an NCAA Division I title playing for Duke University and he had also played for the Los Angeles Lakers and Minnesota Timberwolves in their Summer League teams. Guarding Nick and Kareem quickly made me realize that to play in the NBA you have to be at a whole other level of toughness because even in practice those guys would throw you all over the court.