George Adams was KM’s first
All-American basketball player
(October 21, 2020 Issue)
(Third in a series on some of the best athletes and teams in Kings Mountain sports history).
When Kings Mountain schools integrated – partly in the 1965-66 school year and fully in 1966-67 – the Mountaineers hadn’t won a handful of basketball championships dating back to their beginning in the early 1900s.
But the young people of that day – now ‘old-timers’ - will never forget the 1966-67 and 1967-68 teams that featured some of the best players to ever come through Kings Mountain.
The best then, and probably now as most old-timers will tell you, were young men like George Adams and Otis Cole who excelled not just on the high school level but in college. And, it Adams’ case, the pros.
Total desegregation of schools began in the fall of 1966. But the year before, local Black students were given the option to stay at Compact for one more year or come on to KMHS.
A lot did come on to KMHS, among them Ken Mitchem who was a Mountaineer basketball star and went on to play four years at Pan American University in Texas before becoming a slow-pitch softball superstar with the Pharr Yarns Reds and helping them win a number of national championships.
After full integration, the Mountaineers under veteran coach Don Parker in 1966-67 and Bob Hussey the next three seasons, had their best four-year run in school history. They won back-to-back titles the first two years. In Parker’s last year they went 20-0 in the regular season before being upset by Marion (now McDowell County) in the bi-conference tournament in Hickory.
The 25-0 run came in Hussey’s first year and Adams’ senior year of 1967-68 when they fell to Kannapolis in the WNCHSAA championship game.
With Adams graduated, the Mountaineers had a much smaller lineup but a very good one in 1968-69, led by Cole and guard Charlie Barnes, the latter a very good guard for the Appalachian State Mountaineers, but they finished second in the SWC to a very good Cherryville team. Most of those players were seniors the following year when the Mountaineers won the SWC and built a 23-0 record before falling to Avery County and its 7-4 giant Tommy Burleson in the association playoffs.
Adams enjoyed his days at Compact and Kings Mountain. He literally lived just a stone’s throw from Compact High School and stayed there the first year of integration. He played as a freshman and sophomore at Compact under the late Coach John Blalock, who produced numerous championship teams at Compact in the 1960s and at KMHS in the 1980s.
While Adams’ success at KMHS was what caught the eye of college recruiters, he had a good reason for staying at Compact. His mother had died when he was four years old and his father later moved up north and Adams was living with his elderly grandmother.
“I talked to people like Ken Mitchem and he was telling me what an opportunity I missed out on by not going to Kings Mountain,” Adams recalled recently. “But in those days I had been accustomed to Compact for so long I was hesitant about stepping out. The next year it would be mandatory.
“I lived directly across the road from the little church near the school. I could just walk a few steps and be there. That affected my decision. I also wanted to play at Compact because my older sister and my four brothers had played there.
“My grandmother (Mary Thompson) raised me. My father moved to New York sometime after my mother died. He always remained in contact with me and supplied my needs. He was always in my life and very understanding, but I was the youngest one in the family and I didn’t want to leave her.”
Adams played JV basketball as a freshman at Compact, but started as a sophomore on a very good and exciting Compact team. He went on to become one of the top players in the state his junior and senior years at Kings Mountain.
“My JV year at Compact we had an amazing varsity team with guys like Jimmy Curry, Miles Boyd, Billy McCathen, James Hood and my brother Thomas Adams,” he noted. “They won a championship. I remember when we had a pep rally and they came out of the dressing room wearing blue Compact Cobras jackets. That inspired me to try to be like them.”
If not for integration, Adams most likely would have remained at Compact but he also enjoyed his two years at KMHS. He became the Mountaineers’ first-ever All-American basketball player his senior year and was the school’s second-ever All-American, joining quarterback George Harris from the championship 1955 football team.
In Adams’ two years at KMHS the team posted an overall record of 45-2. In addition to All-American, he was also All-State and played in the East-West All-Star game in Greensboro.
He received college offers from all over the United States, including national champion Houston. He chose Gardner-Webb where he was a three-time All-American and held the school records for scoring and rebounding for many years. For Adams, that was his only choice because his family always came first and he would be close enough to get home when needed.
His freshman year at GWU, he averaged 18 points per game on a team that included All-Americans Artis Gilmore and Ernie Fleming. They were sophomores. GW was beginning a senior college program the next season and they decided to complete their career at Jacksonville University. Jacksonville offered Adams, also, but he wanted to stay at GWU. He left there after his senior year with 15 school records including most points (2,404) and most rebounds (1,113). The Bulldogs played in the National JUCO tournament his freshman year and the national tournament his sophomore, junior and senior years.
Although he never sought special attention, Adams said “I really began getting exposure at Gardner-Webb. It was a great opportunity. I hadn’t had a chance to gain exposure before that and a new page opened up in my life. I go back to Gardner-Webb a lot. I still see and talk to a lot of my teammates. One of my teammates, Billy Ellis, is now the mayor of Boiling Springs.”
Throughout his career at KMHS and GWU, Adams was the leading scorer and rebounder, but he never wanted attention. “I have always been the kind of person that ‘we won’ and ‘the team won.’ It never really was about me and how many rebounds and points I had. I try to apply basketball to my life – work hard and achieve.”
Adams went on to play four years in the American Basketball Association. He was the first inductee in the GWU Sports Hall of Fame and joined Cleveland Browns football star Kevin Mack, the late Western Carolina League president and KM mayor John Moss, and the late Washington Senators baseball great Jake Early in the first induction class of the Kings Mountain Sports Hall of Fame.
“My father (Coleman Adams) only saw me play one time,” Adams recalled. “That was when I was with the Virginia Squires and we played in the Nassau Coliseum in New Jersey. He was at the game and it was one of the proudest moments of my life.”
Adams has always been grateful for the opportunities he had on all levels of basketball – he even served as an assistant coach at Hunter Huss High School for several years. But, he always wished that other great players from Compact had had the same opportunities.
“Believe me,” he said in a 1988 interview in The Herald, “there were a lot of outstanding players at Compact who never got a chance to prove themselves because of the timing. I was lucky.”
Adams averaged over 23 points and 20 rebounds per game during his two-year career at KMHS, and it could have been much more had he been a selfish player or if the Mountaineers hadn’t been as good as they were. In many games, the Mountaineers would build a big halftime lead and reserves would play most of the second half. In one memorable game at Lincolnton, the Mountaineers built a 42-0 lead and in one game at Shelby he pulled down a school record 29 rebounds.
The only time he was held under double figures was in a non-conference game when York, SC went into a deep freeze and Coach Parker ordered his Mountaineers not to try to steal the ball because York’s game plan was to try to get them in foul trouble. The halftime score was 4-2. KM ended up winning 22-13 and Adams scored nine points.
At GWU, Adams once scored 57 points in a single game and had a 26-rebound game. He averaged hitting 64.2 percent of his shots over a four-year period. Although he’s proud of his accomplishments there, he said the greatest thing was playing for a man like Eddie Holbrook.
Adams was drafted in the second round by the world champion Milwaukee Bucks (the 43rd draft choice overall) and played played four seasons with San Diego under NBA legends K.C. Jones (three years) and Wilt Chamberlain (one year). Just like the timing for integration had been off when he was in high school, his time in the pros was off because the multi-million dollar salaries players draw now were not the case then.
Now retired and living in Gastonia, he returns home from time to time to catch a game at Donald L. Parker Gymnasium and cheer on the Mountaineers and perhaps even recall some of those great moments from the sixties.
“I am thankful for all of the wonderful memories from Compact, Kings Mountain and Gardner-Webb,” he said. “I will take in a game now and then. I’ll go to local high school games and Gardner-Webb when I can stay up long enough to see it from start to finish.”
He maintains contact with most of his former teammates, especially KMHS teammate Rick Finger who is a neurologist in Charlotte and helped George get the help he needed for a health problem a while back. He sees teammate Otis Cole from time to time and has a great appreciation for him.
“Otis Cole was one of the best athletes I’ve ever been around,” he said. “He was not only a great basketball player but also a great softball, baseball and football player. And, now I think he’s gotten into golf and I’d say he’s great at that too.”
Looking at his beginning at Compact, Adams recalled three people that really inspired him to be a good player.
“I was around some very good players who were older than me,” he said. “I tried to pattern myself after them. There was a player named Billy Smith who was a great player and inspired me. And there was an athlete named Alex Smith – I don’t think the two Smiths were related – but he was 6-5 and one of the players that really inspired me.
“I started out as John Blalock’s ball boy and trainer. Just sitting on the bench with him inspired me. John Blalock was a good coach and a good human being. He knew how to place people in the places where they would be more effective. He was a father figure for the kids, including myself, who needed motivation and guidance.”
And, he said, he is grateful for the two years he spent at KMHS. In the beginning of integration, a lot of schools had problems.
“But I do not recall a single problem the two years I was at Kings Mountain,” he said. “The people were always supportive of the students and athletes. In the transition of integration I don’t remember any problems whatsoever. That made it great for me.”
