Your Local NBA Team (where players grew up)

[wuck]

Alex K, a Philly fan, put together a list of what NBA teams would look like if they could only draft players in their local region. It as some interesting tidbits. It also shows by omission how important foreign players have become to the league as a whole (such as the current Cavs roster).

Link

Methodology: "I used Basketball-Reference.com's hometowns and high schools attended for players (doing Google research when not finding where the player 'grew up') and Google maps. The players are all assigned to the city of the team they are closer to with the exceptions in the footnotes."

Here is the "local"/"regional". Cleveland Cavaliers Team. Not bad. A little thin at PF/C.

PG Michael Redd (Columbus, OH)
SG Kevin Martin (Zanesville, OH)/OJ Mayo (Huntington, WV)
SF LeBron James (Akron, OH)
PF James Posey (Twinsburg, OH)
C Calvin Booth (Reynoldsburg, OH)

True Hoop comments a bit more. Look at Charlotte!

Your Local Team
February 5, 2009 10:08 AM

Imagine if the NBA had some kind of territorial system, whereby your team was made up entirely of players who grew up at least somewhat near your arena.

Let's hear it for regionalism!

In such a system, which teams would be good?

Alex K. a reader of the Philadelphia-based blog Depressed Fan, spent ages looking up players' hometowns, and plugging them into google maps to find their closest NBA city. (He did not include overseas players -- which is noticeable mainly because these rosters all seem kind of weak, with a big bunch of players missing.) Then he compiled teams of local players for every NBA city.

Right off the bat, you'd think big cities would have the big advantage here. All those people!

And New York City's team is pretty good:

PG Ben Gordon (Mount Vernon, NY)
SG Ron Artest (Queens, NY)
SF Lamar Odom (South Jamaica, NY)
PF Elton Brand (Peekskill, NY)/Ryan Gomes (Waterbury, CT)
C Charlie Villanueva (Queens, NY)

Portland's team has good, if undersized, talent, one reason only: The Sonics left Seattle. Otherwise, none of these players would be Blazers:

PG Jason Terry (Seattle, WA)/Rodney Stuckey (Kent, WA)
SG Brandon Roy (Seattle, WA)
SF Jamal Crawford (Seattle, WA)
PF Marvin Williams (Bremerton, WA)
C Carlos Boozer (Juneau, AK)

But wow, none of that really holds a candle to the mighty Charlotte team:

PG Chris Paul (Clemmons, NC)
SG Ray Allen (Dalzell, SC)
SF Josh Howard (Winston-Salem, NC)
PF Antawn Jamison (Charlotte, NC)/David West (Garner, NC)
C Kevin Garnett (Mauldin, SC)

TrueHoop Link

 

[Mdog1]

Charlotte = GOAT. Man that team would be sick. Cleveland isn't bad either.

 

[bubba52782]

That is pretty interesting...
Cleveland isn't to bad, again they need some big man help but not bad...

Charlotte's team would be pretty nasty to defend against.

 

[johnny]

Koufos>>Booth

 

[skwirrel]

Chicago

PG Derrick Rose
SG Dwyane Wade
SF Andre Iguodala
PF Corey Maggette
C Eddy Curry

Orlando

PG Damien Wilkins
SG Vince Carter
SF Tracy McGrady
PF Marreese Speights
C Amare Stoudemire

Those teams would be fun to watch.

 

[Aussie]

This used to happen in Aussie Rules footy where teams had a specific area where they could get kids to play for them from, but that has been scrapped now.

 

[Lee]

This used to happen in Aussie Rules footy where teams had a specific area where they could get kids to play for them from, but that has been scrapped now.

Way back in the day its how I believe the nba and nfl used to draft.....I mean back in the 40's and 50's from those leagues, its why the concept still exists. How long ago was it the rule for Aussie rules football?