Adams’ book ‘brutally honest’ about Pitt
Thunder center says he never ‘enjoyed’ his time with Panthers
Six years ago this month began a journey that ended up being too brief for Pitt basketball fans, but, by his own estimation, much too long for former Panthers center Steven Adams.
Vaguely outlined in his new autobiography — titled “My Life, My Fight: Rising Up From New Zealand To The OKC Thunder” — the 7foot, 250-pound five-star center prospect Jamie Dixon lured to Pitt was all set to go play somewhere new. And for someone new, rather than the only college coach he had ever known, introduced to him by mentor Kenny McFadden, Dixon’s former teammate in New Zealand.
Adams, almost always regarded as a witty, candid personality in the basketball world, notes early on that Pitt was his only option at the time he committed, and he went there because they offered him first. He is brutally honest in the book about his college experience, writing that he felt “restricted” by Dixon’s philosophy, both for him and any big man in the program.
It also helps explain why he steadfastly stated he’d be back for his sophomore season, only to abruptly leave school and declare for the 2013 NBA draft less than two weeks after Pitt’s seasonending loss to Wichita State in the first round of the NCAA tournament: “In reality, my freshman college season was pretty good. I put up decent numbers and didn’t show any major weaknesses. But because I hadn’t enjoyed it, I finished our final game just relieved to be getting a break,” Adams wrote with co-author Madeleine Chapman.
“I had complained to Kenny [McFadden] a lot during that season, and he promised he would start looking for other college options after I told him there was no way I could play four years being so restricted. Since then I’ve heard that
“In reality, my freshman college season was pretty good . ... But because I hadn’t enjoyed it, I finished our final game just relieved to be getting a break.” Steven Adams
some top coaches will restrict a potential draft pick in their freshman year because it forces them to return to school the following year.”
Adams goes on to say, “I hope it wasn’t true in my case, but I definitely felt I hadn’t reached my full potential that first season.”
Sounding strikingly similar to the criticism many fans at the time, and still now, lobbed toward Dixon, Adams tells how he worked for years to expand his skills, only to see them underutilized:
“To [c]oach Dixon, I was a big man for rebounds and dunks and nothing else,” he wrote. “Kenny had spent countless hours drilling into me that no matter what position you play, you should have a full skillset. But pretty quickly I found my skillset diminishing as the bigs only worked on ‘big’ stuff and had no time for shooting or ball handling. If I shot a mid-range floater — my new favorite shot — during a game, I’d be told off and benched. … That wasn’t the game I wanted to play; it was the game I was forced to play.”
Adams also detailed some other Pitt memories, including how the Panthers made sure he enrolled at Notre Dame Prep for his senior year of high school, an experience he despised even more than his college season. He mentions how he “felt for the guy” when senior point guard Tray Woodall scored just two points in that Wichita State loss, a game that he scored 13 himself and grabbed 11 rebounds as Pitt’s leading scorer.
“The thing was, up until that night, I’d never been given enough responsibility to force me to level up,” he wrote. “In fact, the opposite had happened.”
The Pitt passages are really quite brief, as most of the story revolves around Adams’ upbringing in his home country, his up-anddown family life, and, naturally, his NBA career.