CHARLOTTE, N.C. _ Hurricane Florence is gone, but remains a sobering memory. For the Miami Heat's Hassan Whiteside and Bam Adebayo, both raised in North Carolina, it is a moment that hit home as they returned to the state for Tuesday's exhibition against the Charlotte Hornets at the Spectrum Center.
"My mom had to come down and stay with me," said Whiteside, who was raised just outside of Charlotte. "They had a flood and then the power went out. So my mom was at my house."
Just as Heat players over the years have had to secure their families from South Florida storms, Whiteside said his family planned in advance.
"I called my family, they came down," he said. "It's just the power went out."
An estimated 800,000 homes in North Carolina lost power during the storm.
While a degree of cleanup continues in the Charlotte area, Whiteside said he recognizes many had it far worse.
"I was a little concerned, but I knew we were kind of inland," he said of the home he purchased for his mother in the wake of receiving his four-year, $98 million free-agent contract in the 2016 offseason. "But a lot of places like Wilmington and places that are near the beach got hit a lot harder."
Adebayo was raised in one of those places, in Pinetown, N.C.
While his family was safe and secure, he said the videos posted from friends in that area were sobering.
"You know how tall a stop sign is? It was halfway up the stop sign," he said of where he was raised. "That area is like half on the water, so that half was flooded, fish and all that in the streets. But everybody was OK. You had some flooding.
"There was a guy I knew and his garage was flooded. He took a video and it was almost all the way up. He said he got everything out."
Adebayo, who moved his mother to South Florida after being selected by the Heat in the first round of the 2017 NBA draft, said his grandmother still lives in that area, but, "nobody that I know of was in trouble. It was just a little flooding."
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper reported the death total from the storm in his state at 37, most from drownings involving vehicles.
