Bohls: As Kansas' little center who could, KJ Adams feels it's nice to be needed

Not all that long ago, Kevin Adams had some sage advice for his highly driven son.

Quit being so nice.

At least on the basketball court.

He and wife Yvonne tell all their kids that, whether it’s budding Kansas star KJ or his sister Brittany, a former all-conference volleyball player at SMU, or 13-year-old sister Jaila, who plays basketball and volleyball at Hill Country.

“You want your kids to be humble, but you want them to have the confidence that they’re untouchable,” Kevin said. “With KJ, he was so naturally gifted and so much bigger and better than everyone else, one of his biggest challenges was to stop being so freaking nice. He cares about everybody, which is great, but I tell him, ‘On the court, go be a dog. You can kiss and make up later.’“

He’s working on it.

The dog part. The other, he’s got down pat.

A player the Jayhawks trusted even as a freshman

KJ Adams is hardly the lead dog on a Kansas team that beat Kentucky and Kansas State to snap a three-game losing streak and will face Texas on Monday, but he’s a key dog to help star Jalen Wilson and supporting castmates Dajuan Harris and Gradey Dick with double-digit points in 12 of his last 14 games. Adams could dunk as a seventh grader and loves driving to the bucket.

“He’s emerged as one of the better players in our league,” coach Bill Self said. “He’s got such an athletic body. He’s explosive. Got a high IQ. And he’ll do whatever it takes to win.”

That much is obvious. He's all about winning.

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Rather than redshirt a year ago, Adams was a freshman reserve, employed as a defensive stopper in key situations, including the last one in Kansas’ national championship win over North Carolina in the final 4.3 seconds.

“He was on the floor at the buzzer,” Self said. “He got where we trusted him. We think he can guard one through five because he makes up for his lack of length with his athleticism.”

'Wear it? I don't even touch it.'

Adams had come close to a title in high school as the ringleader of the Westlake Chaparrals, but they fell short against Duncanville in the finals. This time he got the ring, receiving the jewelry with his teammates on the opening night of practice at Phog Allen Fieldhouse.

“It’s beautiful, just like I expected it to be,” Adams said of the ring. “Wear it? I don’t even touch it. It’s in a safe at home. I’m scared I’ll break it.”

This season he’s front and literally center. He has started every game. He averages only 10.5 points and missed his lone 3-point attempt, but he’s got the same number of steals (21) as blocks and plays a huge role.

In fact, it's an even bigger role because on this height-challenged Jayhawks team, he plays inside as perhaps the smallest center in college basketball at 6 feet 7.

“I believe so,” KJ said. “I don’t know of any shorter. But Dad says I’m too nice, that I need to be a little meaner.”

The two sides of KJ Adams

The mean does come out. And he’s shown he’s more than capable of switching his personality from that sweet, grounded kid to an absolute menace in shorts. And Self can’t be happier with the transformation of the sophomore who’s playing out of position to fill a need.

Why else would he be banging against maybe the nation’s best rebounder, Kentucky’s Oscar Tshiebwe, last week and holding his own?

“KJ has done an amazing job under difficult circumstances,” CBS sportscaster Seth Davis said. “He is being asked to guard and score on bigger, stronger players. There may be a limit to depending on him too heavily at the five because a big problem for Kansas is its inability to finish around the rim.”

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Adams the Jayhawk is also Adams the son

Just don’t confuse nice with soft. KJ’s got a chiseled frame, thick legs and an explosive move to the basket and knows how to use that on the floor.

“Out of all the high school guys that have had that much talent,” Westlake coach Robert Lucero said, "he’s probably the easiest one to coach.”

Adams, you see, is a natural pleaser. On and off the court.

No matter the hardship he’s faced — and the family is going through its toughest adversity ever — he’s always got a smile on his face, a testament to how he was raised.

His mother, Yvonne, the outgoing, 53-year-old director of equity and inclusion at St. Stephen’s Episcopal, has fought almost a two-year battle with bladder cancer. Nothing's kept her down, whether she's lost her hair or had to operate from a wheelchair at times. Her report came back clean almost a year ago, but the cancer returned last August and has grown to stage 4. She’s enduring her second four rounds of chemotherapy but is as chipper and positive as ever.

“Because we’re a close-knit family, it’s made the fight easier,” she said. “It’s been tough, but not anything insurmountable.”

Her difficult times have served to strengthen her heartbroken but devoted son and provide some deeper perspective. Where once Yvonne always had to call him, now he's the one calling to check on his precious momma.

“It drove me even harder, knowing she’s fighting something that serious,” KJ said. “It makes basketball not that important as people make it. That three-game losing streak we had, I was pissed. But Coach Self said we have people struggling for their lives, working 9-to-5s, having real life problems, and y’all are upset about losing three games.”

The Adams family knows it all too well. But they embrace the challenge as much as their kids, which is why Kevin and/or Yvonne has been to all but three of KJ's Jayhawks games the past two seasons.

A path that led from St. Andrew's to Westlake

KJ also had to overcome some issues of his own, such as dyslexia, a reading disability that almost sent him to special education classes and wasn’t diagnosed until the fourth grade. But Yvonne insisted on testing, and learning specialist Nuala Judycki helped the family cope.

And as much as Adams liked the teachers and students at St. Andrew’s, he transferred to Westlake in the middle of his sophomore year in part because he and his parents had become a bit disenchanted that the culture and curriculum weren’t totally comfortable for African Americans, they said. They expressed their concerns, but Yvonne said, “They never took it to heart.”

“I loved the people there,” KJ said of St. Andrew’s. “I just didn’t like the structure of everything. It wasn’t right for me.”

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But he was missed.

“He is the nicest guy,” said Blake Ross, a gym manager and basketball scorekeeper at St. Andrew’s who went with his mom, St. Andrew’s teacher and coach Betsy Ross, to a Kansas game last year, decked out with red and blue buttons with KJ’s initials. “He has a magnetic personality. He’s the best athlete who ever walked the halls at St. Andrew’s, and that includes guys like Drew Brees and (major league pitcher) Ross Ohlendorf. KJ’s good at everything.”

Too good, maybe because he had to make choices.

Growing up as the talented son of talented college athletes

He played football as a running back and defensive end until he was in the eighth grade and after practice one day told his dad, “I think I’m going to retire from football.” He kind of beat Tom Brady to the punch.

KJ’s dad was thrilled, even though he himself had once led the state in rushing as a running back at Spring Woods High in Houston and played college ball at Eastern New Mexico. KJ was naturally good in basketball, partly because of the athletic genes passed along from his mom, who was Texas A&M’s leading scorer for two years.

“He got his athleticism from me,” Kevin said. “His basketball IQ and instincts, that’s definitely from mom.”

“That’s a fair assessment,” Yvonne said. “I think he definitely got some of his hops from me. And strong hands run in Kevin’s family.”

KJ and Kevin used to have some spirited one-on-one games, but “he beat me the last time and said he’d never play me again,” KJ cracked. “Mom loved to play H-O-R-S-E, and she always beat me.”

KJ was good enough to play lacrosse in middle school as well as his senior season at Westlake and even wanders over occasionally to watch the Jayhawks’ club team.

Lucero still remembers a game with Lockhart when COVID-19 sidelined the entire varsity, save for Adams and Providence signee Donovan Santoro.

“They were the only two guys we didn’t have to quarantine,” Lucero said. “KJ was a senior, Donovan a junior and the rest were JV. We blew ❜em out. KJ covered up for people on defense, scored 30-something and kept everybody positive.”

When Adams committed to Kansas, Kansas committed to Adams

Adams received offers from a horde of Division I schools and was wooed big time by Iona’s Rick Pitino, but he chose tradition-rich Kansas over Baylor, Georgetown and Central Florida, even without even visiting the Lawrence campus.

“He was on our radar, but truth be told, he called us and committed before we really made a decision,” Self said. “My assistants loved him. So we took him right then. And what a blessing it’s been.”

Adams was so good he made the coaches’ Big 12 all-freshman team as someone who averaged fewer that five minutes a game. That said, he played his role so well as a lock-down defender that Self called on him off the bench for that final clinching defensive play of the title game last April.

Self had previously told the Adams family that KJ might play only four to seven minutes a game and occasionally not at all and that the coach wouldn’t be opposed to his redshirting. But KJ longed to be on the floor, no matter how long.

He’s still so good that even though he was working out with the guards and forwards and might be best-suited at power forward, the coaching staff told him he’d be needed at center since 6-10 David McCormack had left.

“KJ’s maybe 6-8, but Self tells everybody he’s 6-6,” Kevin said, laughing. “He does that on purpose. He calls KJ his ❛baby Draymond Green.❜ ❞

From Mr. Nice Guy to no Mr. Nice Guy

With a much nicer makeup than the Warrior, of course. But KJ’s all about the team and doesn’t mind doing the dirty work. He wants to win.

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KJ won a lot in high school, too, leading the Chaps to a 63-4 record his last two years, but he took hard Westlake’s loss to Duncanville in the 6A state championship game two years ago.

“KJ took them to a place they’d never been before,” Kevin said. “But he really wanted that more than anything for the community of Westlake. They fell short, and it hurt. He was down about three weeks.”

He overcame the hurt, refocused on his basketball and quickly acclimated in Lawrence with his new extended family.

“I would say people think he’s an extrovert, but he’s an introverted extrovert,” Yvonne said. “He loves to be around people. But he wants to have his own time so he can refocus and recharge.”

So KJ and his college girlfriend, Abbie Demler, will rent an Airbnb in Kansas City for a weekend getaway. There, the player who loves to cook will whip up a chicken marsala dish or chicken wings or steak and they will watch “Yellowstone” together or paint or just play board games.

On Saturday, he was back at it against Iowa State and preparing to face his hometown Longhorns on Monday.

“It’s going to be cool,” KJ said. “I used to play Brock (Cunningham, also of Westlake) all the time. He’s kind of my mentor.”

But not on Monday. Adams will be no Mr. Nice Guy then.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Former Westlake star KJ Adams has blossomed into a star for Kansas