Adin Ross's Fame Rose in Part Through Playing 'NBA 2K' With Bronny James

The Gist:

• Adin Ross is one of the most popular streamers on Kick, the platform he joined in 2023.
• He got famous in part by streaming NBA 2K games with Bronny James, the eldest son of LeBron James.
• Adin has also been the subject of numerous controversies throughout his streaming career, including accusations of homophobia and racism.

Thanks to a recent stunt in which Twitch streamer Adin Ross interviewed a person pretending to be Kim Jong Un, he has gained a lot of attention recently. Following this wave of attention, though, many wanted to learn more about Adin. How did he get famous?

As it turns out, Adin got famous through the kinds of streams that he still conducts to this day. The one catch, though, is that he had a pretty famous co-streamer who helped put him on the map.

Adin's earliest days at a streamer involved him playing games live online while he was still living with his sister, Naomi. He caught his first major break when he joined an NBA 2K group known as Always Excelling. He met Bronny James, LeBron James' eldest son, through the group. The two eventually became friends and started streaming NBA 2K games together. They also started doing wager matches with other streamers to grow his popularity even more.

Adin's first major viral moment came in December 2020 when he was streaming with Bronny and LeBron joined the call. The moment was eventually posted all over social media. Since then, Adin has continued to attract even more followers, and has caused a variety of online controversies in the years since. In February 2023, Adin announced that he would be permanently moving his streams from Twitch to Kick.

Adin was able to fool a number of his viewers when he recently did a livestream interview with a person posing as Kim Jong Un, enough so that he broke the viewership record for Kick, approaching 300,000 viewers at the stream's peak.

The person Adin was actually interviewing was a man who goes by Howard X, and markets himself on Cameo as a Kim Jong Un impersonator.

Howard X bears an uncanny resemblance to Kim Jong Un, so much so that many people watching thought the interview was real. It wasn't, but that didn't make those watching any less entertained by the content.

Adin has essentially become face of Kick since joining the platform this year, despite the many controversies that were ultimately the reason he decided to leave Twitch behind in the first place.

Adin has been accused of using racist and homophobic slurs in the past, and of tolerating similar behavior from his followers. In spite of that, he has built a pretty substantial following and he's unquestionably the most popular streamer on Kick.