A U.S. State Expansion On...Where Are NBA Players From?

Very cool stuff by Jason Gurney of BallHype....using Basketball-Reference.com, Yahoo and Google Maps, he was able to plot the birthplace of every NBA player.

Henry Abbott of TrueHoop was shocked that the distribution of players, team by team, was heavily concentrated east of the Mississippi River.

But as Jason points out, this kinda makes sense when you factor in the US population density.

But it got me thinking, what US States are the best at producing basketball talent? I crunched some numbers to see how states would rank in NBA players per capita. I had a theory/feeling that Mississippi would rank highly. Spending time there in my life, I've been fully aware of the talent Mississippi has produced...especially those players such as Jonathan Bender, Monta Ellis and Travis Outlaw who had committed to Mississippi State University but spurned the Bulldogs for the NBA Draft....pre-1-year rule.

Currently, there are 10 players that Jason has listed from Mississippi:

1. Ronald Dupree
2. Al Jefferson
3. Antonio McDyess
4. Lindsey Hunter
5. Mo Williams
6. Erick Dampier
7. Monta Ellis
8. Othella Harrington
9. Travis Outlaw
10. Earl Barron

And remember Jonathan Bender's career unfortunately ended early in 2006 due to chronic knee pain. Also remember that he was the one who broke Michael Jordan's scoring record in the McDonald's All-American game, scoring 31 in 1999. Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda.

In my opinion, the greatest player to ever come out of Mississippi was Chris Jackson AKA Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. He was from Gulport, MS, but went to Louisiana State University. When I was 8-9 years old, my dad and I had season tickets to LSU Basketball...and yes, those teams included Shaq O'Neal and Stanley Roberts.

Jackson's NBA career could be considered rather tragic. The tourettes syndrome he had to deal with in his life was both part of the reason he was such a great basketball player (legend had it that he could not leave his backyard court unless he made 500 straight free-throws, or something like that), and perhaps the reason for his downfall (the medication affected his game, but if he didn't take it, he would twitch uncontrollably). But Chris Jackson's story is for another time, another place, and another blog post.

On to today's numbers (and I'm hoping that I got all of them correctly from Jason's work) -- DC is first in per capita, or fewest residents per NBA player produced. But I live in DC, and the last time I checked, it was not a state (but they sure like to make us pay those Federal taxes) .

The first state? None other than Mississippi. Food for thought.

State	Population	NBA	Residents Per NBA Player
DC	581,530	3	193,843
Mississippi	2,910,540	10	291,054
Louisiana	4,468,976	12	372,415
Illinois	12,831,970	33	388,848
Delaware	783,600	2	391,800
Iowa	2,926,324	6	487,721
Wyoming	493,782	1	493,782
South Carolina	4,012,012	8	501,502
Oregon	3,421,399	6	570,233
West Virginia	1,808,344	3	602,781
Tennessee	5,689,283	9	632,143
Washington	5,894,121	9	654,902
North Carolina	8,049,313	12	670,776
Georgia	8,186,453	12	682,204
Wisconsin	5,556,506	8	694,563
Colorado	4,301,261	6	716,877
New Jersey	8,724,560	12	727,047
Alabama	4,447,100	6	741,183
South Dakota	754,844	1	754,844
New York	18,976,457	25	759,058
Indiana	6,080,485	8	760,061
California	33,871,648	44	769,810
Maryland	5,600,388	7	800,055
Nevada	2,495,529	3	831,843
Texas	20,851,820	25	834,073
Florida	15,982,378	19	841,178
Pennsylvania	12,281,054	14	877,218
Arkansas	2,673,400	3	891,133
Kansas	2,688,418	3	896,139
Michigan	9,938,444	11	903,495
Ohio	11,353,140	11	1,032,104
Utah	2,233,169	2	1,116,585
New Hampshire	1,235,786	1	1,235,786
Idaho	1,293,953	1	1,293,953
Kentucky	4,173,405	3	1,391,135
Missouri	5,817,211	4	1,454,303
Minnesota	4,919,479	3	1,639,826
Connecticut	3,405,565	2	1,702,783
Virginia	7,078,515	4	1,769,629
Oklahoma	3,579,212	2	1,789,606
Massachusetts	6,349,097	2	3,174,549
Vermont	608,827	0	N/A
Alaska	626,932	0	N/A
North Dakota	642,200	0	N/A
Montana	997,195	0	N/A
Rhode Island	1,048,319	0	N/A
Hawaii	1,211,537	0	N/A
Maine	1,274,923	0	N/A
Nebraska	1,711,263	0	N/A
New Mexico	1,928,384	0	N/A
Arizona	5,130,632	0	N/A