NBA Star Steven Adams' Kiwi Ghostwriter on His New Book

NBA star Steven Adams - possibly New Zealand's most iconic sporting export—has just released his autobiography: My Life, My Fight.

Adams himself, characteristically, hasn’t had heaps to say about the book. Briefly, in an interview posted on Twitter, he described it thus: “It’s about myself. … I didn’t actually want to, but someone told me it should be a good idea and they’ll be interested. So I was like, okay, whatever.” Pushed further, he adds:

“No. I didn’t write it. I got a ghostwriter named Madeleine Chapman. I can barely read, mate.”

So who is Mad Chapman? Ghost-writing the autobiographies of male (and frequently female) sports-stars is often the domain of somewhat wizened & white male sports journos. Madeleine Chapman is a 24-year old Samoan woman. When Adams, the highest-paid sportsperson in NZ history, approached her to co-write his autobiography she was just 22, and had been writing online full-time for only a few months.

Adams himself hasn’t been giving interviews on the subject—so we sat down with Chapman instead to hear how it all came about, what it’s like writing an astonishingly high-profile figure's life in a matter of months, and what deep insights into the soul of New Zealand’s greatest basketballer she has to offer.

VICE: Start with telling me how did you come about co-writing the Steven Adams autobiography?
Madeleine Chapman: We met when we were like 15, just through basketball. I was a lazy basketball player in that I didn’t do any extra training outside of the assigned team workouts. He was the one who did the every day—would go and train by himself if he had to. I think the first time we actually talked was when we both happened to not be leaving the morning training quickly—I didn’t have to go to school afterward and he just didn’t seem to care that much about school, he would just miss first period. I told him it was my birthday and he goes ok, I’ll buy you a pie, for your birthday. So we walked up, got a pie. Stood outside and ate it.

After that it was sort of, we know each other now.

So you knew each other from playing basketball. How did that translate to a book deal
[Once I became a reporter] I think he quite liked the fact that I didn’t write anything about him without him knowing —didn’t do some classic I Used To Train With Steven Adams piece. So when I asked for an interview he was like okay, sure—as a favour I will do it. Then he bailed on the interview and didn’t message for three months. Then he messages: “Are you good at reporting?” And I said, “Yeah, I think pretty good.” He said, “Can you send me some of your stuff?” So I did. A few months go by, then he said, “Have you ever written a biography before?” And followed up with: “Like a whole book?”

I sent a message saying, you know, if you are wanting to write a book I think we would be a good match to write it together—blah blah blah. And he replies with a thumbs up. Another month goes by, and he asks for my email, then says, “Someone will be in touch”. Ten minutes later I got a Facebook message request from the director of publishing.

Always check your message requests.
You either get someone angry at you or maybe a book deal.

So you’re 24?
24 now.

So for you at the time, a 23-year old, with no kind of specific experience in the land of biography-writing, what was it like, to suddenly be writing a book about one of our best-known sportspeople?
I was 22 when he messaged and asked that first question: “Have you ever written a book?” My first thought was: oh my God, he’s gonna do a book and he’s looking for a writer. And I was like… I don’t know how to write a book. Which is true—I didn’t know how to write a book. I’d only been working for The Spinoff—which was my first journalism job—for, at that point, less than six months. But obviously you can’t say no—there’s no way you’re going to say no to this, you just have to figure out how to do it.

And what was that process like?
You sign something and it’s due 12 months from now. You sort of go, oh yeah that’s fine: 80,000 words in 12 months. Of course, I divide 80,000 by 12 and go: I just have to write 1,000 words a week and yeah I can manage that. That’s just like an article. But then, of course, I couldn’t write anything until I had spoken to him, and I couldn’t speak to him until June. So that took away a bunch. Even in June we only got to early childhood. I didn’t get the rest of the story until mid-way through November. Then all of a sudden it was - you have 65,000 words to write in a few months.

I had never written more than—I think my longest piece of writing at that point was 3,500 words.

Ok, so you’re faced with this mammoth task. How did you do it?
I wouldn’t recommend this process! This is a cautionary tale. After Christmas [my office] had a break until about the 8th. And I lived at the office. Basically, there are no buses over the New Year period—public transport is like non-existent. So I just packed up a bag, took a blanket, went to the office. Basically didn’t have a schedule as such, I would just write, and if I hit a block I’d go and have a nap, and then I’d go back and write, so I had no sleeping pattern what-so-ever.

So any hour?
Yeah. It was definitely a weird thing. I made it my home, I moved into the boardroom. I realised quickly my productive hours were between 11PM and 4AM so then I just started writing more then. I got through maybe half of it in that break. [When the office came back], twice a week I’d stay at the office all night and write. Put my transcripts and stuff in the drawer at 8.30 as people started coming in for work.

Tell me about Steven, what’s he like? What was it like to write with him? Can you tell me something we do not know about Steven Adams?
He’s kind of the same as you see in all those interviews—which is actually a bit disconcerting, because you assume he’s putting on this sort of face. But then it’s so consistent you realise that’s just how he is. He jokes and downplays himself a lot which is a lot of people's default. But he is very confident and knows his own abilities. In person? He just eats a lot and drinks way too much water—or enough water, I guess. Any time we sat down he would drink a litre and a half of water just while we were sitting there. Just constantly refilling his glass. He’s methodical. In the offseason [he’s still training] at 10 every day.

He doesn’t have any secretive things that he does, [so in that sense] there’s not much to reveal. With the book, all the best interesting stuff that I think people will be quite excited to find out is in his childhood and teenage years. Most of that is his Dad, both when he was alive and him passing when Steven was 13—that has shaped everything. Those are pretty formative years of someone’s life, and after his dad passed away he was a bit unmoored. There was a period of about a year where he did nothing, sat around and played games on the Xbox. But then a few people actually stepped in and said, this is what’s best, and he just went straight ahead, full steam.

Everyone in NBA and all the scout reports say that he was the “most coachable” player—which is about the biggest compliment you can really give someone. He knows what he knows and he knows what to do and can make his own decisions but he is also good at being told what to do and doing it. There is a sense of… growing up, his dad was 6’10, an intimidating figure. Whatever Sid Adams says, that’s the rule you go and do that. When he died, maybe it was like, there’s no-one to tell me what to do and that’s what I’m good at is following instructions and getting the job done. At the time definitely, he was looking for someone like that and he got [coaches and mentors] and now, yeah, he is still considered as coachable as ever. Those habits have stayed and served him very well.

A lot of sports reporting—and perhaps especially sports biography, is dominated by men. Probably older men, maybe longtime-sports reporters, in New Zealand I’d say mostly white. That’s not you. How do you think your approach was different?
There’s an assumption, to write a book about an athlete you have to know and have written about sports—which is completely false. If they tell you their story and you’re a good writer, you should be able to tell anyone’s story. It shouldn’t matter if you are an expert opinion in their profession or not, you’re not inserting your expertise into their life you’re just retelling their story. I hope [after this] that publishers will not look at who is good at writing about sports but who would be a good fit with this person. It is interesting when you see certain autobiographies for certain sportspeople, and you see who wrote it, and it’s like chalk and cheese. The background, the ethnicity, everything is just different. And yeah, they might know about the sport but they’re not going to know about their culture and they’re not going to know about their family values and what things are prioritised in that environment. There’s strength in everything but I think that what Penguin got by hiring me—although I wasn’t their choice, I was Steven’s choice—is someone who can actually, to a small degree, relate to Stevens life in certain aspects of family and sport and how they interact, and that sort of thing. Which I don’t think they may have gotten with sort of classic sports writers.

I think the more interesting parts of autobiographies are often the childhood. You get to the professional side and it’s been pretty well covered, usually as it happened. But it’s the first half of the book [on family, upbringing] that you want someone to know and write it insightfully.

I hope that in future, publishers can look a bit beyond the default options. It’s quite rare—he is a Tongan guy and I’m a Samoan woman. Having a woman co-write a man’s autobiography is rare. It’s usually men writing women's autobiographies. Honestly, I don’t think I missed anything by being a woman. He has been hit in the nuts quite a few times, and that’s the one experience I did have to ask about—I sent a message to all of the guys in the office, I said, “Could you help me describe what it feels like to be hit in the nuts?” And they’d come back, “No, it’s not a burning exactly, it’s more this”. That I think was the only thing that I required outside expertise on.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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