Steven Adams knows what it is to stand head and shoulders above the pack.
Not in the NBA obviously where his 2.13m frame makes him merely above average. But he is now and will remain for many years, at the top of our sporting rich list.
By this time next year, he will be the only active New Zealand athlete to qualify for the NBR Rich List, with earnings alone of more than $80 million, and another $80 million to come in the following 24 months of his back-loaded four-year contract with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
He very nearly qualified this year, the first year of that OKC deal taking his career NBA earnings to more than $45 million. Endorsements have added several million more.
When that contract ends in 2021, he will be just 26 and yet to reach his prime. If the next two years of his career follow the same trajectory as the previous two, he will be very much in demand.
He is already the best offensive rebounder in the NBA, and on ESPN’s ‘Top 25 Players Under 25’ list.
Adams played 2487 minutes of the 2017-18 season which, put another way, works out at nearly $800,000 an hour.
This year, he became the first New Zealander to feature on the Forbes list of The World’s Highest Paid Athletes.
According to Forbes, he was the 86th highest earning athlete on the planet, the 35th best paid in the NBA.
For perspective, he was three places (and $725,000) below the highest-paid cricketer, Virat Kohli, and just above footballer Sergio Aguero and former tennis world No. 1 Novak Djokovic.
Photo: Keith Allison