by Steven Adams
Russ scored easily yet again and we were within two points with two possessions left in the game. We needed a stop and a basket. The Nuggets wound down as much of the clock as they could before taking a shot. They missed, Russ snatched a clutch rebound and called a timeout. We had 2.9 seconds to score a field goal to tie, or a three-pointer to win. Russ wanted the win.
When you sign a $100 million contract, people want to see $100 million plays immediately. My contract wouldn’t begin till the next season, but that didn’t matter. I was now the guy getting paid more than half the league’s superstars (only because their old contracts hadn’t ended yet) and fans wanted me to prove it somehow. All I knew how to do was to keep playing how I’d always played—tough.
Perhaps my new signing was a boost to my confidence because I decided to properly respond to trash talk for the first and last time. Jonas Valanciunas from the Raptors was ripping into me all game, totally aggro. When he asked for a fight for the hundredth time, I finally turned to him and said, “You don’t want to mess with me. You use a knife and fork to eat your food. I use my hands.” He didn’t know how to respond to that because it was so dumb, but it got him to shut up for a while, so I guess it worked. I decided to retire from trash talking after that game and go out on a win.
The inbound play was designed for me to set a screen for Russ at the top of the key so he could get the pass and shoot straight away. But when he cut off my shoulder, his defender stayed right with him and he couldn’t get the pass. So I turned, was open and ended up with the ball. There were only two seconds on the clock, but I knew there was no way in hell that ball was leaving my hands in the direction of the hoop. Instead, I looked for Russ, who was now a good 10 feet beyond the perimeter, and chucked him the ball. He caught it and shot it from way downtown with a defender right on him.
Our season had been bumpy, we were young and new, but Russ put us all on his back. We all had to step up and most of us did, but probably not as much as we wanted to. Russ still had to shoulder the vast majority of the media scrutiny and, as any NBA fan will know, Russ doesn’t like to chat all that much when it’s for media. But he still went out of his way to take responsibility for our team after every game and not let the rest of us be blindsided by a question from the press. Off the court, Russ was a bit of a goof, but on paper he kept things short.
Everyone had said Russ would have to have a big season for us to make the playoffs. No one said he would have to have one of the greatest seasons in NBA history. But he did it anyway, because that’s what Russ does.
The shot looked good. It looked even better when it dropped through the net while the buzzer was still sounding. We won 106–105. On the day Russ got his record-breaking forty-second triple-double, he scored 50 points and won the game with a buzzer-beater three-pointer.
If there was any doubt he would win MVP that year, it was erased after the Denver game. When the shot dropped, the bench jumped up and ran on court to embrace him. Even the Denver crowd, whose team had just been eliminated from playoff contention, couldn’t help but cheer for him. He had just capped off one of the greatest individual regular seasons in NBA history, but it was clear that we weren’t a title contender. We needed more firepower. And we got it just three months later.
17.
THE COMPLETE THOUGHTS OF RUSSELL WESTBROOK ON HIS GOOD FRIEND AND TEAMMATE STEVEN ADAMS
“He’s great.”
18.
THE NEW BIG THREE
The drama of the NBA goes way beyond the court. Even when the season is over, fans obsess over the trades. And that’s how it was in September 2017.
We had made the playoffs in April, which surprised a few people. But we lost 4–1 to the Houston Rockets in the first round. It had been a long season with everyone on the team having more responsibility than they had ever had before. While we thought we’d done well, we knew the front office would be looking to make some big trades over the summer.
If my job was to get better as a player every day, the general manager’s job was to put together a team that could win a championship. I don’t think anyone was operating under the delusion that our current setup would win a championship. Something had to change. And a lot of things did in September.
The day my “Stache Brother” was taken from me was a rest day. But of course Russ, Dre, and I were in the gym having a workout. I knew there was a trade in the works because every front-office worker in the facility was making phone calls all morning. A tiny part of me thought maybe I was about to be traded. Columnist and blogger Bill Simmons had tweeted earlier in the week that the Knicks were looking to trade Kristaps Porzingis and were in talks with the Thunder. Kristaps is a center so people assumed if a trade happened, I would be the one to go. Then articles were written saying I was probably going to be traded to the Knicks by the end of the week. It was all bullshit and a rumor that started from one tweet that never even mentioned my name, but that’s how crazy NBA fans get during trade season.
Instead we found out that Enes and Doug McDermott had been traded to the Knicks in exchange for Carmelo Anthony. I was gutted. Not about the Melo part (Melo’s the man) but that my buddy Enes, who just days earlier had made a video about how much he loved Oklahoma, was leaving.
We went straight to see Enes at another gym where he was holding a basketball camp for some of the local kids. It was really fitting that on the day he was traded, Enes was giving back to the community. We crashed his camp and let him know that he would always be our bro. That night, Russ and I took him out to dinner for his final night in OKC before he flew to New York.
That’s how it goes with basketball. You can be completely at home and happy in one city then living in another one the next day. I had just bought a home in OKC so was pretty glad not to have to move again. It’s hard because you want to settle in and make a city your home, but at the same time you really can be traded at any moment and there’s nothing you can do. It can be brutal.
OKC TEAM ROSTER 2017–18
ALEX ABRINES, guard
STEVEN ADAMS, center
CARMELO “MELO” ANTHONY, forward
COREY BREWER, guard
NICK COLLISON, forward
P. J. DOZIER, guard
RAYMOND FELTON, guard
TERRANCE FERGUSON, guard
PAUL “PG” GEORGE, forward
JERAMI GRANT, forward
DANIEL HAMILTON, guard
JOSH HUESTIS, forward
DAKARI JOHNSON, center
PATRICK PATTERSON, forward
ANDRE “DRE” ROBERSON, guard
KYLE SINGLER, forward
RUSSELL “RUSS” WESTBROOK, guard
I can’t imagine what it’s like for those players who have played for 10 different teams in their careers. If it were up to me, I would stay with the Thunder forever and take over from Nick as the oldest guy on the team.
There’s definitely a double standard in the NBA around trades. When a team trades a beloved player to another organization, most of the time people just consider it a business decision. Too bad for the player; that’s the nature of the league. But when a player chooses to join a new team, they are labeled a traitor and greedy and all sorts of bad things. What’s the difference? We’re all here trying to win. That’s why teams trade players and that’s why players sign with new teams. It’s all the same, and yet players are expected to be loyal to one team while also being shipped around endlessly if GMs decide they don’t need them anymore.
I was happy for Enes, though. New York is the perfect place for him. They go hard and don’t hold back on anything, which is exactly Enes’s style. As soon as he landed in New York City he started stirring shit and starting beef with everyone. I loved it.
At the Thunder we like to keep a low profile and keep our guys out of social media spats, but the Knicks fans love it when Enes goes in fighting for them. He’s had beef with LeBron James, with people saying he’s all talk and would pussy out of a fight. Last I knew, Enes was wanted for ar
rest in his home country of Turkey for talking shit about their president. So, no, Enes wouldn’t back out of a confrontation with LeBron James. But, yes, he would definitely get knocked out because he can’t fight for shit.
Enes got traded, Doug got traded, Victor Oladipo got traded, Domantas Sabonis got traded. We lost a lot of good guys that summer. But we got Melo and Paul George (“PG”), and Russ signed a five-year contract extension. Suddenly, our team looked like a super team and was being hyped as one.
I was happy to go back to my more defined role in the paint and leave the new big three to work out the rest. That’s what they were called. First the “Big Three” and then the “OKC Three” and sometimes the “OK3.” Russ, PG, and Melo. They were the new faces of the Thunder and, honestly, I was so glad. Some fans insisted that I should be included in the new nicknames, but I was happy working in the shadows. I’d be completely invisible if it helped my team win games.
During that same off-season, while the Thunder front office were furiously negotiating trades all over the place, New Zealand was working on its own recruit. Will Steven Adams play for the Tall Blacks this year? This question has been asked every year since I declared for the draft and every year I have the same answer. “Today, no. Some day, yes.” Every time the question comes up, a lot of people don’t get my position. In most sports, representing New Zealand in a black singlet is the peak. Athletics, netball, rowing… But there are some sports, such as soccer, tennis, and basketball, where playing overseas is the ultimate goal. That’s the pinnacle of those sports.
Yes, I would love to represent New Zealand by playing for the Tall Blacks, but right now I don’t feel I have time to give it my best and play a full NBA season. It probably doesn’t help that I don’t feel a great sense of loyalty to Basketball New Zealand. I like what the current Tall Blacks coach, Paul Henare, has been doing with the team and I would love to play for him at some point, but I need to be ready.
Some might expect me to be the Basketball New Zealand poster child, but I did the opposite of rising through the ranks of junior national teams. Being in a national team is far too expensive for most kids—me included. Kenny set up the alternate route, the New Zealand Basketball Academy, which runs free trainings every morning in Wellington and sends teams to Las Vegas every year for their annual tournament. Those Vegas trips are expensive too, but the difference is that the community comes together to support the players. Teams now have their own Debbies and Bernices as team managers who tirelessly navigate fundraising with the players. If they need a bit of help to make their target, I’ll also pitch in so they can go.
It takes a village to raise a child, apparently. And it takes a village to fundraise for one too. New Zealand does best when everyone is invested. I had my own little community of helpers who pushed me towards my passion, but that’s not a cost-effective approach. Kenny still takes every morning training, like he has for over a decade, and I know there will be plenty more basketballers thanking him for their success in years to come. But, for now, his project from 2008 has one focus and that focus is the Thunder and the NBA.
The 2017–18 season was a bumpy one. We had never had big names like PG and Melo join our team before, and it took a few months for everyone to figure out what their role in the squad was and how they could best help us win. We worked hard on it because we knew that with the guys we had, a championship ring was there for the taking. But the same could be said of a handful of other teams. It all comes down to who can do it on the day.
NBA analysts called 2017–18 my breakout season. Before Christmas I had my best offensive game ever against the Minnesota Timberwolves with 27 points from a perfect shooting game, 11 from 11 and five from five free throws. Apparently, I joined a couple of old guys as the only players to go 11 from 11 in a game in NBA history. That was cool.
That same game I busted out the Euro step for the first time—pretty much a rugby sidestep but done slower. I scooped up the ball at half court on transition and realized there was no one in front to pass to so I dribbled (rare) and went for the fast break Euro step (unheard of). I made the basket and I swear I heard my teammates cracking up from the bench.
The truth is, I wasn’t playing any different from how I played the season before. The difference was that we had three All-Star scoring threats on the perimeter, which draws out the defense and gives me plenty of room to work and score inside the paint. If I had a good game, it’s because my teammates were shooting well and forcing my defenders out to focus on them, leaving me with more open looks.
I liked how our team looked. Everyone bought in 100 percent and committed to the cause. We went on a winning streak and then followed that with a losing streak. But it’s the adversity that made us a tighter unit and forced us to understand each other better both on and off the court. When we didn’t play well, we all wanted to figure out why. To do that means spending more time with each other off the court, eating out after a game or having dinner at someone’s house (I pretty much don’t do anything unless there’s food involved).
I was thrust into a leadership role at the end of 2016 that accelerated my growth within the organization, but the 2017–18 season allowed me to get back to being a defensive anchor and role player. I still did what I could to help the newer players on the team, but there were more senior players all of a sudden, which translated into huge improvements in my game.
When I began as a rookie with the Thunder, I did my work, played hard, and made sure not to talk to the refs in case I got a technical foul. When a call didn’t go my way, I knew that Russ would be right there, asking the ref to explain it. That’s what leaders do for their teammates.
Even in the 2016–17 season, when it was usually Russ and me sitting down for the press conference after games, Russ was still the leader. When a reporter asked how the rest of us played without Russ on the court, Russ stepped in and told him not to try to separate our team. We won as a team and we lost as a team, even if Russ was topping every stat pretty much every game.
Now, we had new guys like Dakari Johnson and Terrance Ferguson who had all the right instincts but didn’t always get their way on court. It was then my job to be the one to question the refs and speak up for my boys. Yes, the Thunder is a business and sometimes business can be cruel. You never know who will still be in your team at the end of the season. But once we get a team together, we’re brothers. And we’d die for each other.
When Dre got injured playing the Detroit Pistons, that hurt me even more than when I had my own injuries. He went up for an alley-oop and tore his patellar tendon. I’m not entirely sure what that is, but I knew it was bad as soon as he hit the ground. Dre is tough and doesn’t stay down unless something is really wrong. When he didn’t get up, I sat down with him until the stretcher came in. That’s what you do when someone you love is hurt. You stay near them and give them strength through your presence.
Dre and I started our NBA journeys together, and if it were up to either of us we would end them together too. I’ve eaten a lot of Whole Foods sandwiches with that guy, sitting on the back of my truck in the parking lot, having a yarn. When you’ve spent five years learning to be adults together, your careers become intertwined. So when Dre went down, I felt like we were both injured. I knew he’d be back, though, because I wouldn’t leave him alone until he was.
Dre and I had become the defensive anchors of the team, him up top and me in the paint. And we were proud to be leaders on defense and team hustle. That’s what a lot of young players forget. Being a great defender is just as valuable as being able to score, if not more so. Literally anyone can hustle on defense. If you’re struggling with your shot or you can’t seem to make plays happen, I say work on your defense. Become the best defender in your league and no one will care how many points you score.
The same can be said for setting screens. A strong screen is a massive weapon in the game and about the most contact you can enforce without being pulled up for a foul. If you can set a good screen
for your teammate to score, that’s basically an assist. And opponents will start to hate you for it. Tough screens have become my specialty and I make sure that everyone thinks twice before running into me. Defense, screening, and rebounding are underappreciated by a lot of kids, but doing those three things well doesn’t require inherent talent and will take you places, I promise.
Dre is the best defender I know and when PG joined us, we became the defensive team in the NBA. With Dre out for the rest of the season, we all had to adjust and step up to fill the massive hole he left, but it wouldn’t be a full NBA season without a few setbacks.
We got into a habit of beating the best teams and losing to the worst teams. It wasn’t an ideal situation to be in, but it was comforting to know that only the best teams make the playoffs so statistically we had good odds to go all the way.
Things don’t always go to plan, though. We lost to the Utah Jazz in the first round of the playoffs. Our season was over, but I knew we’d be back next season to fight again. No matter the outcome, we never flinch.
19.
WHAT NOW?
In New Zealand I’m part of a brown minority. In the NBA I’m in a white minority. And in Oklahoma City I’m somehow both. No matter where I go I don’t seem to fit neatly into a box. Usually it doesn’t matter too much and being in the NBA and earning millions of dollars means I don’t have to deal with the discrimination some of my family have had to deal with back home. But it also means that for the first time in my life I have to be careful about what I say. I learned this the hard way when thousands of people called me a racist.
In my first few years with the Thunder I didn’t have to do too many interviews. We had stars on our team that the media wanted to hear from and I was glad not to have to be in front of the camera after every game. However, when I did end up with a microphone in my face I always tried to really listen to the reporters’ questions and answer as honestly as possible. I liked to joke around with them too. We all have jobs to do and the reporters’ job is to ask questions, so I tried to make their lives a bit easier by giving interesting answers.