My Life, My Fight Page 8

  My first game playing for the Saints was at TSB Arena in Wellington, our home court. I was so nervous before the game that I threw up. Heaps of my mates from Scots College were there as well as a whole bunch of teachers. I’d never had that many people come to a game just to see me play and that didn’t exactly help with my nerves.

  I have never been as anxious about a game of basketball as I was for that first Saints game. Not even playing my first game in the NBA compares. I don’t remember who we played, but we won, and I didn’t make a fool of myself—and that was all that mattered to me. As the season went on, I started to come off the bench earlier and got more minutes, which grew my confidence and let me finish the season with some really strong games behind me. It was during this season that I finally grew confident enough to dunk on people, not just around them.

  We won the championship that year, winning the final against, of all teams, Hawke’s Bay, and continuing my unbeaten streak with Wellington basketball teams. I was named Rookie of the Year. I got to line up against the best players in the country, and the Saints got a big man for free because if they had paid me I would no longer be an amateur and would have been ineligible to play college basketball in the United States. Kenny was really careful about that. He’d known some guys who didn’t understand the rules and had accepted payment for playing in a random tournament, and then lost their scholarships.

  University of Pittsburgh had committed to giving me a full scholarship the following year and I certainly wasn’t about to put that in jeopardy. The Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon had visited New Zealand again after the Junior Tall Blacks camp and had come to a game that our Wellington rep team was playing against Kapiti to warm up for Nationals. Kapiti has never been a strong basketball unit so there wasn’t much to see, which is lucky because, thanks to the many weird NCAA recruiting rules, Jamie had to stand outside the whole game. If he’d come inside, though, he would have seen me shattering the Kapiti College backboard and breaking their hoop. I’m not sure if that would have helped or hurt my chances, now that I think about it. Either way, Coach Dixon soon confirmed my scholarship offer.

  I never considered other colleges in America besides Pittsburgh because there weren’t any to consider. Back then, to get a scholarship you needed a connection to a college and the only one we had was Jamie, who had played basketball with Kenny decades earlier. These days, there are more and more college scouts coming to watch the New Zealand Secondary Schools National Championships every year, which is incredible to see because it gives players options to find a U.S. college that best fits them as a player and as a student. I went to Pitt because they were the first to ask.

  In August 2011, I attended the adidas Nations tournament in Los Angeles for the second time. I had gone the year before when it was held in Chicago and while I thought I did okay, I definitely didn’t blow anyone away. The best part of it was getting a whole bunch of free adidas gear. I could finally stop wearing the same three T-shirts everywhere and I didn’t have to buy any new socks for years. But in 2011 I had made huge improvements, I had upped my training to twice a day during the school term and four times a day in the holidays, and I was feeling fitter than ever after my season with the Saints. The tournament was a massive success. I played with Team Asia, and although we lost all our games we were at least competitive. I ended up averaging 22 points, 16 rebounds, and two assists over four games. They were my impressive stats.

  My unimpressive stats were the few media interviews I did. I can’t bear to watch any of those old interviews now because I sound completely lost. During one, the poor interviewer was getting absolutely nothing from me, like even shorter answers than Russell Westbrook gives these days. After a few minutes trying to get more than two-word answers, he asked, “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” I looked at him for a while, thought about it, and managed to come up with “I dunno, just… running.” I seriously listed running as a strength. Wanna know what my second strength was? Playing. I nearly cry thinking about how bad I was at answering questions back then. Like anything, it’s a skill and one I clearly hadn’t learned at that point. Thankfully, players aren’t recruited solely on how well they can string a sentence together or there would be a lot fewer players in the NBA right now.

  I heard later that what impressed the coaches and reporters wasn’t that I was scoring lots of points, but that I was able to score points and defend well against the big names in my recruiting class, the biggest being Kaleb Tarczewski, another 7-foot center. Kaleb’s name had been floating around the tournament as one to watch, but I knew if I just played my own game and hustled on defense, I wouldn’t have any trouble matching up against him. I came away with 20 points, 24 rebounds, and four assists. Kaleb had 10 points and four rebounds.

  To be honest, I was used to this happening. Even in New Zealand I was often considered an underdog in match-ups with big guys whose names had been thrown around the circuit well before I’d even started playing. But I always managed to outplay them.

  The first examples were two North Shore players, Isaac Fotu and Rob Loe. I like both those guys and they are great players, but the first time I played them at under 19s, everyone expected me to be outclassed by their experience. Instead I was able to outhustle and outmuscle both players on the way to another New Zealand national championship.

  During my final year of school, I really started to get the media’s attention. Being 7 feet tall was enough to make it into the local newspaper every once in a while, but after I signed on to the Saints, I started to get some real coverage. And New Zealand quickly displayed its usual tall poppy syndrome. Yes, most of the attention was good and supportive, but there were still a lot of people saying that I only got picked because I was tall or—and this was a real weird one—because I was Valerie Adams’s brother. I knew how good I was so it didn’t bother me too much, but it’s hard to completely ignore comments like that, especially as a teenager.

  As I started to play more for the Saints and to show my worth, the comments didn’t go away, they just morphed into new insults. Since they couldn’t say that I wasn’t good enough for the Saints, they started saying that the NBL itself wasn’t that great and once I got to America I’d soon learn that I didn’t have what it takes to play Division I ball. I don’t know what it is with some New Zealanders, but they really take the notion of being “humble” seriously. So seriously that they’ll do their best to humble you if they think you’re not doing it for yourself. Did people want me to say that I didn’t think I could make the NBA or succeed in basketball? Did they want me to act surprised that recruiters were saying I was good? I didn’t train every morning for four years to not be good or to pretend that I just got lucky.

  The other thing that I wasn’t prepared for were the assumptions about my family and my childhood. I’d deliberately been vague about my background because I preferred to keep some things private, and I didn’t want to suddenly have my family in the papers. Somehow, in doing that, I got an even worse outcome. One mention by me of not going to school and suddenly I was “living on the streets.” A random anecdote about being friends with someone whose dad was in the Mongrel Mob and soon I was reading about how I was on the verge of joining a gang. That one made me laugh because if I’d even tried to get in with a gang my sister Viv would have yanked me right back out again. Even though I thought these stretched truths were funny, I knew it was hurtful to my siblings who had looked out for me and were now being painted as absent or even neglectful guardians. No one ever mentioned my mum, even though she was around, which I’m sure she didn’t appreciate.

  The family talked with Val about how we should deal with these stories as she was the only one with media experience, and she said the best thing was to say nothing. So that’s exactly what I did. I said nothing and watched as Steven Adams became an orphaned kid living on the streets, stealing and getting into fights, and about to join a gang before he was plucked from the gutter and brought to Wellington.

  By th
e end of 2011 and my years at Scots College I had comfortably passed all the exams required for entry to college in the U.S. It meant I wouldn’t have to go to summer school at Pittsburgh or take a bridging academic course to qualify for my scholarship. Unfortunately, because so many players end up having to delay their college careers as their grades are unsatisfactory, Pitt had taken the safe route and enrolled me into Notre Dame Preparatory School in Massachusetts. Even though I didn’t need to go there, they kept me enrolled anyway so that I could get used to the American style of basketball. I figured that was probably a good idea, but it meant having to leave for the U.S. almost as soon as the New Zealand school year finished instead of having a break to spend time with friends and family.

  Once again, I shrugged it off, knowing that if I let myself dwell on it for too long it would be no good for my game and my mental wellbeing. Besides, Notre Dame sounded like a cool place to learn the ropes of American basketball, and I couldn’t wait for the step up in intensity.

  While I had been focusing on my basketball I still tried to play other sports as much as possible. Experts used to say that kids had to choose their one sport as early as they could and stick to it. But my time spent playing rugby and doing athletics was only ever beneficial to my basketball. So while I was training hard out with Kenny I was also learning how to throw the shot put.

  Every year, schools around New Zealand have athletics days to pick a team to compete in local, then regional, then national meets. I won the shot-put event at Scots College because I was the tallest and no one else bothered with shot put. It’s simple math; I had the better angles. Then I won the Wellington and the regional competitions and started to think maybe I was actually the man at shot put as well as basketball. It wasn’t a completely ridiculous idea, as I at least had the genes for it. By then, Val was an Olympic gold medalist, winning at Beijing in 2008, and she would go on to win gold at the 2012 Olympics in London too.

  The Wellington throws master, Shaka Sola, who represented Samoa in discus and shot put, had seen me throw at the regional meet and told me I should head to the athletics stadium that weekend to have a session with him. I didn’t have any basketball on so I went along and soon figured out that he was the Kenny McFadden of throwing events. We went through some basic technical drills and I had improved my throw by the end of that first session. The thrill of such an immediate result got me hooked and I trained with Shaka every weekend for three months until the National Secondary Schools Athletics Championships.

  I could see straight away why people get into individual sports like track and field. For someone who lives off seeing results, each increase to my PB was a new high. Basketball let me see improvements on the court as well, but with something like shot put, the evidence was right there in the measurements, and I became addicted to seeing that number go up.

  Even though I’d only been training for a few months, my naturally competitive nature meant that I went into the national meet fully expecting to win. When I began training with Shaka, I was throwing around 11 or 12 meters. By the time Nationals came around, I was throwing 15 meters and feeling confident.

  What I had failed to notice were the occasional news stories about a guy called Jacko Gill who had set a junior world record at the age of 14 and won gold at the World Junior Championships. I showed up at the meet and went through the warm-ups with all the other part-time throwers while Jacko sat stretching on the side. He didn’t look very big and was certainly not as tall as me. Then he got up for his one warm-up throw and heaved it close to 20 meters. “Man, what a dick,” I thought. “At least pretend that you’re trying.” I finished up in fourth place and decided to end my athletics career then and there. I knew if I kept training I could add a few more meters to my throw and maybe even get somewhere close to Jacko’s distances, but sometimes seeing someone excelling in their passion is enough to convince you to stick to yours.

  At the end of my time at Scots College I was asked by the principal if I would be willing to make a speech to the entire school about what I hoped to be up to in years to come. Scholarships to American colleges were rare even then and I knew the school was proud of me for getting through my years at Scots and achieving academically. I hesitated for a couple of reasons, the main one being that I’d never spoken in front of a crowd before. I had gotten comfortable doing oral assignments in front of a class or a couple of teachers, but hundreds of students was a whole other deal.

  I burst into Ms. Parks’s office and told her I wasn’t doing it. She had no idea what I was talking about as I ranted about why I couldn’t possibly speak in front of the whole school and why everyone would think I was dumb. She didn’t say anything. She just looked at me and I knew I had to do it. People had started to follow my story by then and I’d noticed some of the younger kids at the school seemed to look up to me, in every sense. It was the least I could do for a school that had taken a chance on a scruffy kid and helped him reach his goals. I worked on that speech with Blossom, I worked on that speech with Ms. Parks, I worked on that speech with my friends. I worked on that speech more than I had worked on any assignment or exam in all my time at school.

  I included a little bit about my childhood—a topic I had staunchly avoided until then. I told them how I hated all of them when I first started at Scots and they laughed, maybe thinking I was joking. But I also spoke of how going to Scots had made me realize the importance of an education and that no matter what happened to my body, I’d always have the things I learned in the classroom. I spoke well. I was no Barack Obama, but I managed to get through it without any major fails and I got a huge round of applause. When I looked around at everyone I saw that a lot of the teachers were crying, particularly my three school mums. That’s when I knew I’d done a good job. You know you’ve done well on the basketball court if your team wins and you contribute. But you know you’ve done a good job in delivering a speech if you make people cry.

  It took three and a half years at a very expensive private school for me to realize the importance of an education. When I walked into Scots College I hated everything about it and I only wanted to be playing basketball. When I walked out of Scots College for the last time as a student, I knew that playing basketball wouldn’t be possible without an education, and learning would still be there long after basketball was gone.

  8.

  BORN TO RUN IN THE USA

  I arrived at Notre Dame Prep in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, at the end of 2011 to spend one semester playing in the high school league. I expected to be staying at an American version of Scots College given that the name Notre Dame made me think of posh old stone buildings. Instead I found I’d be staying in an absolute shithole.

  On the first of the three stories was the kitchen and classrooms, which were actually converted bedrooms because it was originally a house. The teachers lived on the second story and the students lived on the top one. I’m not exaggerating when I say it was straight out of a horror movie.

  It’s a school that’s pretty much for anyone who doesn’t score well on the standardized admissions test (SAT) used for college entry in the U.S., which I didn’t know at the time. I thought I was going there solely to work on my basketball. It turned out that my SAT results were fine, but I didn’t get them back until March and I was sent to Notre Dame in December.

  There was a basketball gym, although calling it a gym is a bit generous. It had a green vinyl floor which concealed concrete underneath, so it wasn’t exactly great for the joints to be running on that stuff all day. The hoops were old and had half-moon backboards, which I didn’t even know still existed.

  My teammates were cool, though. We bonded over our crappy shared living experience and the fact this was a new environment for all of us. Our basketball team made up nearly the entire student body. The only students who weren’t in the basketball team were three Korean exchange students and one girl who had a baby and had been in juvenile detention.

  After being at Scots College, where the acade
mic side is taken very seriously, doing classes aimed at players who had failed most subjects was a piece of cake. Besides, I didn’t end up needing extra marks anyway. In fact, it seemed like the school needed us more than we needed it. When we weren’t in class or playing basketball, we had to help keep the school running.

  The gym was hired out every week for bingo, which we were in charge of setting up. Trestle tables and chairs were brought in and a TV was balanced on one of the rims so everyone could see the numbers when they were called. None of that stuff would ever be allowed on a wooden gym floor, but it’s hard to dent concrete by scraping a chair over it.

  The place might have put some people off playing basketball at college, but I think most of us there came from fairly rough backgrounds and were used to making do. I might have spent the past four years going to a private school, but that didn’t erase my ability to sleep anywhere, no matter how gross.

  I did struggle with being alone again, and it was hard not to relapse into the depression I had felt after Dad died. I’d gotten used to having a tight-knit community around me, always willing to help out with anything. At Notre Dame I had nothing but my guitar, which turned into a bit of a lifesaver. For me, the trick to fighting thoughts of loneliness has always been to find a routine. I had a packed routine the whole time I was in Wellington and it had never given me time to sink into self-pity. Once I got to Notre Dame and saw how miserable the whole place was, the door to those repressed emotions became unlocked. If it wasn’t for one of the coaches, that door might have swung wide open.

  Nick was a coach and a teacher at the school, but pretty soon he became more like a big brother. I think he knew how bad the place was and because I was the biggest and also the only player from outside America, he looked out for me in the form of good food. The meals at the school were truly terrible. Almost every day for lunch we were given gross burger patties on a dry bun. It was like eating Spam, except worse. I would have gladly tucked into a can of Spam. But when you’re hungry and have no money to buy other food, you eat what you’re given.