Steven Adams: My Life, My Fight, co-written by The Spinoff’s Madeleine Chapman and published by Penguin Random House, is on sale this weekend. In a chapter entitled 'What Now?', the Kiwi NBA star considers how his life has changed...
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.
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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.
As the seasons went on, I started to play more and I guess I became known as a good interview, because the media began requesting time with me more often. I was still not giving nearly as many interviews as Russ and KD, but more than I was used to.
By the time I was the go-to guy with Russ at the end of 2016, I felt like I was spending half my days answering questions. But my one slip-up that got me in trouble came earlier, after Game One of the conference finals against the Warriors.
We had just managed an upset win and I had had a good game, so was ushered over to Chris Broussard from ESPN. The interview was the usual stuff, talking about sticking to gameplans and executing, blah blah blah.
Then he finished by asking what it was like for me to sometimes have to guard Steph Curry and Klay Thompson on the perimeter after a pick-and-roll switch. I laughed, because we both knew I hated it.
I told him I didn't envy guards, because 'they're quick little monkeys, those guys'. I went back to the locker-room, had a shower and returned to the hotel.
Then I checked my phone. Apparently, I was a racist.
I had to go through quite a few tweets to find what I had said to send people into a spin. When I saw it was the word 'monkey', I was honestly just confused.
In New Zealand, parents call their kids 'monkeys' all the time. Little rascal, little monkey, they mean the same thing - a naughty kid with too much energy, who runs around endlessly.
I had no idea that monkey had ever been used as a derogatory term anywhere. After googling it, I learned pretty quickly.
My teammates thought it was kind of funny, because it was just me being an idiot and not knowing anything. And they gave me a pass, because I'm 'European white'.
In the NBA, there are three skin colours - black, American white and European white. European white means literally anyone who is not from America.
It's a classic American move to assume that the rest of the world is all the same, so Tony Parker (French, but born in Belgium, with an African American father and Dutch mother) is European white, Alex Abrines (Spanish) is European white and, apparently, I'm European white as well.
I wouldn't have gotten a pass if I were American white, because that would mean I grew up there, and should know the history of racial discrimination and derogatory terms. Instead, I grew up in New Zealand, where I was used to being the one discriminated against.
Being Tongan and poor, I could basically say whatever I wanted growing up, because I was only ever punching up. At Scots College, I was one of the only brown students and definitely one of the only poor students, so I was incapable of saying the wrong thing.
People in New Zealand also seemed to care less about what everyone said, and whether or not it was offensive.
I'm all for increased awareness and for being more sensitive to everyone's struggles, especially when they are different from your own, but I also know that sometimes people really do just say things out of ignorance and not malice. I did that, my teammates educated me, I apologised, and now I know why what I said was wrong and I won't say it again.
When I made that comment, America was in the middle of a shambles election. The whole country was divided and it was a little scary seeing how far people went in their political beliefs.
I can't vote in America, so I wasn't really paying attention, but it was hard to miss what was going on.
Trump's a dick - that's obvious - but Oklahoma is a Republican voting state that backed Trump in the 2016 election. When people attack Trump, they like to attack Republicans too.
I don't identify as a Republican, but I understand some of the values they believe in and I also understand that I'm a well-paid NBA basketball player, who doesn't have to deal with the effects of policy changes in any real sense.
Some people look at Republican states and lump everyone together, saying they're scum. It's just a state like every other state and there's a whole spectrum of beliefs, so really those who say that are the scum for being narrow minded about it.
I probably shouldn't be saying anything about US politics except be nice to each other.
I did vote in the New Zealand election in 2017. I didn't even know one was happening, until I went back home in the off-season and saw all the campaign billboards around.
While I knew all about US politics without even wanting to, I didn't know anything about the New Zealand election.
I had gone to the Beehive once to meet Prime Minister John Key. He was nice, but I have no idea if he was a good Prime Minister.
I wanted to vote in New Zealand, but I hadn't read up enough on each of the candidates. In the end I voted for Gareth Morgan's The Opportunities Party because he had a lisp and a decent moustache.
Then I heard that, after the election, he was mean about the new Prime Minister’s cat dying and that's not cool. I'd like to formally retract my vote, thanks.
That's the weird thing about elections - they make you realise which part of society you belong in. Most of the time it's either a race thing, a money thing or an age thing, but during the New Zealand elections I realised that I didn't belong in the categories I thought I did.
I still think of myself as a poor brown kid from Rotorua. I don't dress any differently to how I did 10 years ago.
I'll still walk around the Thunder gym and out in the parking lot barefoot, because I didn't wear shoes for most of my childhood. I wear my clothes until I have to throw them out, because they're too gross.
I bought a camo jacket, like, two seasons ago and I'm still wearing that thing almost every day, to trainings and games and back in New Zealand.
There was actually an NBA rule that players weren't allowed to wear sweats or to dress too casual before games. I always wore the closest thing I could to sweatpants without getting fined.
Then last year, they got rid of that rule, and I've been living the life of game-night tracksuits and camo gears ever since.
