WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. – Making his appearance on Inside Rams Camp in July, wide receiver Davante Adams was asked by Rams legend and analyst D'Marco Farr which receiver he modeled his game after. Before Adams responded, Farr explained that he and Voice of the Rams J.B. Long were guessing greats like Tim Brown or Jerry Rice, since Adams grew up in the Bay Area.
Farr, and perhaps others, was surprised by the initial answer: Hall-of-Fame NBA point guard Allen Iverson.
The shock subsides when you remember Adams was focused more on basketball growing up. And of course, as Adams became more invested in football, he began watching other receivers like Randy Moss and Keenan Allen.
Still, his response was instructive to one of the biggest influences on a release package and elite ability to separate from defenders on the field – like a well-timed crossover on the hardwood – for more than a decade, which he now brings to Los Angeles' offense.
When the Rams acquire a new player via the draft, a trade or free agency, they show that player's highlights in one of their first team meetings as a way to welcome that player to the team. Unsurprisingly, head coach Sean McVay was well-versed on Adams' pre-NFL resume, and that basketball background was one of the things he called attention to as he broke down some of Adams' best moments on tape from the 2024 season.
"One of the things that guys have seen about Davante, you can tell he was a hooper," McVay says in the video. "He can get parallel, can work edges on people, these are the things that you love to be able to see. Isolation fades. This is going to make us better collectively on both sides, being able to add a great player like Davante Adams, and he's got the ability to be able to finish and make plays."
Adams in multiple interviews over the years has said basketball was his first love. He said that when he broke his arm playing quarterback for a year in Pop Warner as a kid, he thought he was done with football. Basketball then became the focus.
Eventually, he picked up football again – during his junior year of high school. Since he was still raw at running routes, he leaned on what he knew the best.
"At that point, I was looking at basketball movements, because that was more what I saw fit my body and my movements, my biomechanics, was more of the basketball, the hoop movements," Adams said on Inside Rams Camp. "Even the way I release (off the line of scrimmage) now, it's more basketball than it is football, which I can attribute a lot of the reasons why DBs have issues, because it's more unconventional to what they've seen."
It didn't take long for him to learn how seamlessly some of those natural movements would translate from the hardwood to the gridiron.
"Really when I first started playing my junior year in high school, it was natural," Adams told theRams.com. "I had missed the 'Hell Week' portion of the training, went out there and started, like a week before the season, basically went up, and I remember vividly catching a post, and it was a little bit under-thrown. My quarterback was Chris Bono, (former UCLA quarterback and 15-year NFL veteran) Steve Bono's son. He threw a post to the middle of the field, and I just kind of slowed up for it, me and the DB just went up, and it just felt like going up and getting a board or dunking on somebody. So I just went up and caught it, and that was my first moment realizing, 'Damn, okay, this is kind of more natural than what I thought it'd be.' And just kept working on it, and didn't get as serious into my craft at that point, because it was a lot more just natural to the movements that I had in basketball and started to evolve."
How that evolution began to unfold: Off those natural movements, he went on to post 29 receptions for 484 yards and seven touchdowns in his junior season at Palo Alto High School. As a senior, he more than doubled his catches and yards and nearly doubled his touchdowns: 64 catches for 1,094 yards and 12 touchdowns. Palo Alto High won the state championship that year, and he went on to play college football at Fresno State.
Adams learned early on that he'd have to find an edge to compensate for his lack of speed, so those translatable skills and traits from basketball became a crucial part of his skillset as a receiver early on. A hesitation or "hesi" was a natural fit across both sports.
"Really, the 'hesi' is the centerpiece to what I do," Adams explained. "Not being a 4.3-4.2 guy like some of these dudes out there, I had to figure out a way to get an edge and be able to be explosive, get off the ball, change the speed within routes. And yeah, that ended up being one of my main tools."
Varying the tempo on the routes is something Adams said he didn't put a lot of thought into initially, because it's what came naturally to him based on the way he played basketball.
"It was more like, I began doing it because that's what I would do in hoop," Adams said. "I would get up on a guy, I would never just go full speed everywhere, it was always like, 'get here, slow him down, boom-boom,' and then make moves and just keeping them uncomfortable. So that was just naturally what I went to, and I noticed that it had the same effect on guys, so just kind of kept it going."
Adams grew up watching Iverson because he felt like Iverson's skill set was similar to his. Although he wasn't the same height as Iverson when he was younger, he was on track to be a point guard. 12-year veteran NBA point guard Deron Williams was another he watched closely.
"Watching those guys that had the handles, quicks, it was always that," Adams said.
When Adams got to high school and began playing football again, he started watching players like Santana Moss and Randy Moss – "Randy Moss has always been my favorite receiver," Adams said – and later on, in terms of peers closer in age to himself, Allen, whom Adams said he watched the most.
"That was somebody that was damn-near like an idol to me," Adams said of Allen. "When I was in high school, learning how to play wide out and just watching the way he played it, similar skill sets, the both of us. Neither of us were burners, so I felt like there was a lot that he did that I could kind of take and put in my bag."
While there was nothing off-hand that Adams could think of in terms of things he tried carrying over from basketball to football that didn't work, he said one of his biggest adjustments was "not being able to be on your own clock" – something he was still adapting to even through his first couple of seasons in the NFL.
Running basic routes in college afforded him more freedom to operate the way he saw fit without impacting the entire concept. Picking and choosing when to do that in the pros, however, would take time.
"First two years, I had to get an adjustment of understanding, because it was a lot more basic routes in college, I was running slants, a lot of screens and goes, so I kind of could operate a little bit more, I had a little bit more time to do my thing and not mess up the whole concept," Adams explained. "And then you get in the league and you're moving around more, so it's a little bit more imperative that you're operating within the clock. So yeah, that was something that I had to get used to a little bit."
"He's a smart guy," quarterback Matthew Stafford said Wednesday. "He understands that when those times come to use the unique skills that he has to get open. He's done a heck of a job doing that. It's been a lot of fun to be around, a lot of fun to watch, but at the same time, has an understanding of, 'Hey, this may not be my play in this coverage, and I gotta make sure I do my job to help my teammate out.'"
Many examples of those who have successfully translated their basketball exploits to football can be found throughout the NFL's history, especially over the last 25 years.
Look no further than the top 10 all-time leaders in career receiving touchdowns: Pro Football Hall of Famers Randy Moss, Antonio Gates and Tony Gonzalez (Adams, at 103 career receiving touchdowns, shares that top 10 company at No. 10 on the list entering the 2025 season). Moreover, it has helped Adams become 156 receiving yards away from 12,000 for his career – a feat only 31 other players have achieved in NFL history. Those 11,844 career receiving yards are fourth-most among active players, by the way. He's also 14 receptions away from moving into 19th in NFL history.
To do so for 12 years now is something Adams takes a lot of pride in. And he's going to keep doing it until his playing days are over.
"I feel like it's a big reason why I've been able to do that," Adams said. "Just staying true to my skill set and what makes me me. And I think a lot of that is it makes the defenses uncomfortable because they don't feel the pressure that I'm putting on them a lot. Not a lot of guys play receiver more like a hooper than a football player, so I feel like that gives me an edge."
