Rising star hits the books for NBA shot

It ain't easy being New Zealand basketball's man of the moment but NBA-bound Steven Adams is taking his new-found fame in his stride - big, big strides.
Provided he gets through his final year at Wellington's Scots College, the 17-year-old 2.10m-tall younger brother of world and Olympic shot put champion Valerie Adams will join the prestigious University of Pittsburgh in May next year.
Adams and his size 20 adidas boots have been pounding the floor of Tauranga's QEII Youth Centre since Friday as his Wellington men's team chase back-to-back titles at the national under-19 championships.
Make no mistake, Adams is a colossus, sending opponents flying with defensive blocks with hands shaped like pavers and almost ripping the rim from the backboard with thundering dunks and alley-oops that require little in the way of vertical exertion.
Many are picking Adams as an NBA sure-thing if his game continues to grow, something Wellington basketball guru and under-19 coach Kenny McFadden believes is beyond question if he can meet the strict academic criteria imposed by the NCAA.
Adams' story has garnered plenty of airtime in the past eight months - plucked from Rotorua, where he was skipping school more often than he was going and getting mixed up on the fringes of gang life, by his older half-brother Warren as a 14-year-old semi-illiterate tearaway, right on the cusp of making a permanent track down the wrong path.
McFadden has steered Adams' development as a basketballer in the capital while caregiver Blossom Cameron now has legal guardianship and has offered Adams stability at home.
Adams battled through Year 12 at Scots College last year and admits it's over the books where the most sweat is being spilled as he chases his dream of a move to the US.
Adams didn't exactly have his pick of schools when he arrived in the capital in 2008, but for someone for whom the inside of a classroom might as well have been outer space he's knuckled down nicely once he got into the swing of dragging his giant frame through the school gates every morning.
"Genetically Steve was always going to be a blessed athlete [he was 1.93m just into his teens] - I played hoops with his brother Warren [2.13m] and another brother Rob [Tuilave] and they was both big guys, so it was obvious size was never going to be an issue," McFadden said.
"But schoolwork is what he needed, and still needs. He could walk onto a university team now, suit up and play, but unless he has the right SATs and grade point averages then he'll never be the student athlete he could be."
Adams possesses the same raw shyness his Olympic champion sister had when she first sprung onto the scene. But his brain works fine and he knows the US dream will remain just that if he doesn't put in the graft in the classroom.
"Grade points averages, SATs... it's all laid out in front of me plain and simple and I know the levels I need to do this," Adams said over the weekend, warming down from another Wellington win. "It's Pittsburgh next year, and beyond that who know, but only if I knuckle down at school. Nothing's happened yet [as far as a move to the States goes] and nothing will unless I make it happen with the books."
Adams said last year was probably harder at Scots as he got back into the swing of attending school regularly.
"I've adapted to Scots, their system and gotten into more of a swing this year.
"Last year and the year before it was more of a big shift in mindset to knuckle down and start learning again."
Adams' dad Sid died in Rotorua when he was 13. Sid was a busy man, fathering 18 children, with half-a-dozen playing basketball for New Zealand.
McFadden first came into contact with Adams when Warren steered him towards his gym soon after he left Rotorua. McFadden knew he was being handed a diamond in the rough but was unsure how much Adams wanted to work to reveal the precious jewel inside.
He needn't have worried - Adams has thrived under McFadden's coaching.
"He's a big 7-footer, the type of basketballer New Zealand is crying out for, but he wouldn't have achieved anything without work ethic. At six every morning he's in the gym and it's nothing I've ever had to drive him to do - he wants it.
"He's got the goods, no doubt, but there's a ways to go because this game isn't so much what you can do at 15, 16 or 17 but more what you're capable of at 20 or 21.
"I can only take him so far, getting him to a level that will get him to Pittsburgh. From there they'll take him far beyond that in terms of training, putting him against people he needs to go up against and giving him the exposure to realise those NBA aspirations."