Teenager Adams tipped for big things
Steven Adams doesn't like to think about where his life might have ended up if he'd stayed in Rotorua, dodging school, hanging with gang members, spending his days, when he could be bothered hauling himself off the couch, looking for trouble and more often than not finding it. With neither direction nor discipline in his life, he was going nowhere fast.
Now just a couple of years on, having been grabbed by the scruff of his neck and hauled out of his destructive, spiralling lifestyle by a brother that cared enough to act, he's a million miles from that dark place. Going somewhere in his own sweet time.
He's living in Wellington with someone who loves and cares for him; he's being guided by a sporting icon who's also become a father-figure; and he's attending the city's top school and continuing to amaze everyone with his progress in an academic world he still finds deeply uncomfortable.
He's also headed for the NBA, if certain judges of hoops talent are to be believed. Possibly to make millions of dollars, probably to achieve feats no New Zealanders have ever managed and almost certainly to become one of the most devastating basketballers this country has ever produced.