By LARRY VAUGHT
Bam Adebayo was a standout at High Point Christian Academy in North Carolina when he picked Kentucky over Duke and North Carolina. He was a one-and-done player who was a first-round pick of the Miami Heat.
Adebayo has become a NBA All-Star and fixture with the Miami Heat. Recently he discussed how the culture at Kentucky shaped him — and let him financially secure his mother’s future like he wanted to do — in an interview with JJ Redick’s The Old Man and the Three podcast.
“The biggest thing is we all had to sacrifice,” Adebayo said. “So what you’re doing in high school does not matter, basically. We’re starting fresh. It felt like a fraternity process, how I put it to a lot of people, knowing like fraternity processes and how they go.
“You’re there for like (months), you can’t say anything about it. It strips you down to you, and that’s what it did to a lot of us at Kentucky. Just going through that pressure as an 18-year-old kid, having to hold this standard for a university and the history they have behind it, the dudes that went to Kentucky before me and how they performed.
“Everybody’s going to the Elite Eight, Final Four. Some got to the national championship. Some won, some lost. So seeing that, it was like, from the time I stepped in, I knew it was a standard for me. And then I was always going to be held to that standard.”