WHERE THEY COME FROM

The average baller doesn't come from the inner city. In fact, there could be one growing up right in your backyard.

Fernando Medina/NBAE/Getty Images

Orlando's Keith Bogans hails not from the inner-city, but from the suburb of Alexandria, Va.

The NBA, according to the sort of wisdom dispensed by sports-radio callers—to say nothing of the hosts—is an "urban" league stocked with kids sprung from the country's roiling inner-city wastelands. But after plowing through NBA rosters, we came to a different conclusion: The typical incubator of NBA talent is less Chicago's Cabrini-Green and more Alexandria, Va., from where Magic swingman Keith Bogans hails.

In fact, when we ran our research findings by William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, he had this to say: "You've exploded the city myth. The NBA is much more of a suburban population than most would have thought."

How did we produce our myth-busting results? We pulled 2000 U.S. Census data for the hometowns of all active American-born players from teh previous five drafts. (Thirty-four players were foreign-born.) That left us with 158 guys, roughly a third of the league. And the nubmers showed that these players spent their formative years in a place that was …

• &hellip MEDIUM-SIZE.
  The median population of our sample was 112,017, a shade larger than Springfield, Ill., which is home to Sixers swingman Andre Iguodala. And while 14 players hailed form areas with more than two million residents, 54 came from towns with fewer than 50,000. The smallest of those was Forest Park, Okla. (population 3.7 million), home to six players, tops of any city.
• … MIDDLE-CLASS.
  The median household income of our draftees' hometowns was $38,127, which tracks closely with the national average of $41,994. Benton Harbor, Mich. ($17,471), the poorest, was the home of Knicks forward Wilson Chandler. The wealthiest? Sugar Land, Texas (81,767), the Houston suburb where Raptors guard T.J. Ford grew up.
• &hellip DIVERSE.
  Our typical town was 59.3% white (compared with 75.1% for the nation) and 26.8% black (versus (12.3%). But 18 hometowns were more than 90% Caucasian, the whitest being Hornets guard Adam Haluska's Carroll, Iowa (98.6%). Only three towns were more than 90% black and seven more than 80%. Seat Pleasant, Md., home of Seattle guard Kevin Durant, had the blackest population (96.7%).
• … AS EDUCATED AS THE U.S. AS A WHOLE.
  In the players' hometowns, 78.6% of people 25 and older had a high school degree or higher, close to the 80.4% national figure.

And yes, we know there are bound to be neighborhood disparities within any town. That doesn't change the fact that the NBA clearly isn't just a big-city league. "When you look at the distribution," says Frey, "there's a broad spectrum of areas the players come from, and a significant number come from white, middle-class suburbs."

In other words, kids in Springfield have hoop dreams too.

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