Blocking Out the Noise: How iamadamthe1st Never Lost Faith in Himself and Proved the Doubters Wrong - NBA 2K League

Blocking Out the Noise: How iamadamthe1st Never Lost Faith in Himself and Proved the Doubters Wrong

`Early in the NBA 2K League season, Adam Kudeimati, aka iamadamthe1st, had heard all the various forms of trash talk.

Let Kuda shoot.

Make Kuda beat us.

The taunts were were formed by opponents from a perception about his background. That he’s perceived to be more skilled with a camera in his hands than he is with a controller.

The jabs never really bothered the Knicks Gaming point guard. He knew, in time, that if he stayed the course his validation would come from his play on the court.

That time came this past weekend at THE TICKET, the league’s second mid-season tournament with an automatic playoff berth awaiting the winner. Adam carried Knicks Gaming to four straight victories as the 15th seed for an improbable championship run. He was named tournament MVP in the process.

“To go out there and be what others didn’t think I could be felt cool,” Adam said. “It felt good to kinda shut everyone up and make everyone really change up their game plan.”

When he entered the league, he was known by the masses as Kuda, one of the most visible content creators in the NBA 2K community. What had started as a hobby as a child quickly grew into a passion.

Adam was introduced to cameras at an early age by his father. He started making videos around such topics as gaming and real-life sports challenges while slowly building an audience. Self-taught, he spent countless hours honing his craft, watching online tutorials on video editing and audio production while studying other prominent online creators.

Things progressed to the point that by his senior year in high school in 2016, he hit over 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, a mark of self-satisfaction for any online influencer. His notoriety allowed him to participate in unique opportunities, such as making a video with Houston Rockets star James Harden as well live-streaming with rookies from last year’s NBA Draft.

While spending time in front of the camera, Adam was also perfecting his skills in NBA 2K as a slick-handling point guard. Hailing from nearby New Jersey, he was selected with the 60th overall pick by his hometown team in April’s draft.

“Content creation has always been at the heart of what I do and what I want to do,” Adam said. “It’s been cool to transition that over to the league.”

Knicks Gaming’s transition into a winner, however, took some time. The team went 3-7 through the season’s first eight weeks, all but watching their postseason aspirations drift away. They entered THE TICKET as the third-lowest seed.

Their best, and perhaps, only chance at participating in playoffs would be winning the tournament. Then a funny thing happened. They did just that, thanks in large part to a breakthrough performance by Adam, whose play to that juncture in the season was serviceable but at times left something to be desired.

Adam blitzed through the tournament, averaging 26.7 points and 7.2 assists while knocking down 20 3-pointers over his team’s four games. The world finally got to see the player his Knicks Gaming teammates watch perform at a high level every day during practice sessions.

“A lot of it was confidence,” Knicks Gaming head coach Kyle Rudy said. “He’s been, all year, a different player at practice than in games. When he’s aggressive, he’s a great player that can score.”

Added Adam: “I’ve always known what I’m capable of and what I could do. It was really just a matter of being in position to do that.”

Getting him in said position was a result of a couple specifics changes.

First, he switched to a different build than usual, one that allowed him greater ability to knock down shots from distance. Secondly, his teammates trusted in him becoming the focal point of the offense. Particularly GOOFY 757, as noted by Rudy, selflessly surrendered some of his offensive production despite being the team’s leading scorer to instead defer to Adam.

“He was just in a zone,” Rudy said. “It got to the point where I didn’t even want to talk to him between games. I just let him be. I told him ‘you’re playing perfect.’”

The tournament finals saw Knicks Gaming face off with Celtics Crossover Gaming, a team making their second straight championship game appearance. The underdogs pulled off the upset, with Adam hitting 5 3-pointers on the way to victory on the grand stage.

“We’re so used to being a viewer for moments like that, to being in the moment as opposed to being a part of the moment,” he said. “It was pretty cool for that Cinderella story.”

With their ticket to the playoffs now punched, Knicks Gaming has the four remaining weeks of the regular season to dial things in. It’s an advantageous spot to be in while others worry about securing one of the league’s final seven berths.

And should Knicks Gaming find a way to recapture that same magic again to bring home what would be the franchise’s first championship since 1973?

“It would be unbelievable,” Adam said. “This city in general, we’ve been craving that sort of sports team. We might not be a traditional sports team in that sense. We’re knida the new kids on the block. To sort of halfway legitimize us with this tournament and then follow that up with the league championship would be crazy.”  

If a deep postseason run is in the cards for Knicks Gaming, it might just fall on the shoulders of their content-creating point guard.

While his coach believes Adam hasn’t received enough respect league-wide throughout the course of the season, that changed on the heels of his MVP tournament performance.

“He gained the respect he deserves,” Rudy said.