Loyola boys’ basketball coach remembers kid brother

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Today is surreal for Jamal Adams. Maybe a little sad. Maybe a little painful. Maybe filled with memories both good and bad.

It is Coach Adams’ first day in months with no basketball practice, no game preparation, with nothing but his thoughts. Last night, his Loyola Cubs were eliminated from the boys’ basketball playoffs but Adams isn’t pondering the defeat. No, he’s thinking back to his kid brother, Kenan Adams, who passed away in October just as the new season began. It was cancer and Kenan was 31.

‘For all these months,’ Jamal Adams said, ‘I had games and practices to occupy my mind, then it all just stopped last night. And, with it gone, it’s giving me a lot of time to think about my brother.’

Adams paused, then said: ‘You know, I’m just driving around picking up my kids and can’t stop thinking about him. Today is a tough day.’

Kenan Adams did his undergraduate work at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and earned his MBA at Northwestern. By age 27, he was married and already a vice president of a private equity firm in Chicago. Kenan used to say he’d be ‘the next Donald Trump’ -- then, three years ago, he was diagnosed with sarcoma.

That moment changed Jamal Adams’ path in life. He left his Wall Street career and found a more purpose-driven mission -- he became a full-time teacher at Loyola, teaching economics and African-American history. Both he and Kenan graduated as Cubs and ‘bled Loyola blue.’

‘I’m happy to talk about my brother all day long,’ Jamal Adams said.

And I can understand why -- Kenan sounded like a great guy.

-- Anthony Stitt

- Image from www.aurora-inn.mb.ca