New York may be home to the financial, fashion, advertising, and hip-hop industries, but it has also bred its fair share of NBA greats. Playing on the streets of New York City or the illustrious cities of Albany and Buffalo, New York has definitely contributed more than just about any state to the national culture and zeitgeist.
Below, we are going to rank the best NBA players born in New York. Who’s your top pick?
Michael Jordan
What is there to say about Michael Jordan that hasn’t already been said or written. The greatest basketball player of all-time, Michael Jordan was actually born in Brooklyn, New York on February 17, 1963. He was born at Cumberland Hospital in Fort Greene, a neighborhood in Brooklyn. Although he was primarily raised in Wilmington, North Carolina, he did spend his first five-years in Brooklyn.
In high school, Jordan played basketball, baseball, and football. However, when he tried out for the varsity basketball team at his high school, he was deemed too short to play at the level. Motivated by this moment, Jordan would routinely score 40+ points in the junior varsity league.
Training religiously and regularly, as well as a growth spurt, would allow Jordan to qualify for the varsity team, where he averaged 25-points per game. As a senior, Jordan was selected to play in the 1981 McDonald’s All-American Game and scored 30 points.
Although Jordan was heavily recruited by college powerhouses, he chose the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was the ACC Freshman of the Year and averaged 17.7 points per game on 54% shooting during his time at UNC.
Surprisingly to many, Michael Jordan was not chosen as the number 1 overall draft pick in the 1984 NBA draft. Rather, he was selected third by the Chicago Bulls behind Hakeem Olajuwon and Sam Bowie, by the Houston Rockets and Portland Trail Blazers respectively.
The choice of Olajuwon and Bowie over Jordan was deemed necessary by both teams as they both needed centers for their team. However, ESPN rated the choice of Bowie over Jordan as the worst draft pick in North American professional sports history.
Jordan would, as any NBA and basketball fan knows, go on to lead the Chicago Bulls to 6 championships. He was dominant in nearly every aspect of his play and has an array of NBA accolades to boot. A 6-time NBA Finals MVP, a 5-time NBA Most Valuable Player, a 14-time NBA All-Star, a 3-time NBA All-Star Game MVP, a 10-time All-NBA First Team, an NBA Defensive Player of the Year, an NBA Rookie of the Year, a 10-time NBA scoring champion, a 3-time NBA steals leader, and a 2-time NBA Slam Dunk Contest champion, just to name a few.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was born in New York City, New York on April 16, 1947. Born as Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr., he would adopt his Muslim name in 1971 when he converted to Islam. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is, perhaps one of the greatest centers to play in the NBA, and is another great player born in New York.
Playing high school basketball at Power Memorial, in New York City, Kareem won 71 consecutive games and had a total high school career record of 79-2.
In college, Kareem attended UCLA. He would average 29 points and lead them to an undefeated 30-0 record. Sports Illustrated would describe him as “The New Superstar.” In his three years at UCLA, the team went 88-2 and he was named national player of the year three-times and Most Outstanding Player in the NCAA Tournament three times.
Kareem was selected as the first overall pick in the 1969 NBA draft by the Milwaukee Bucks. In 1975, he was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers, where he would continue to have a dominant style of play. In the NBA, Kareem has a list of notable achievements. He is the all-time points scored leader with 38,387 points. He is also a 6-time NBA champion, a 2-time NBA Finals MVP, and a 6-time NBA Most Valuable Player.
Julius Erving
Julius Erving, or Dr. J, was born in East Meadow, New York on February 22, 1950. He received the nickname “Doctor” or “Dr. J” from a high school friend named Leon Saunders, stating,
“I have a buddy—his name is Leon Saunders—and he lives in Atlanta, and I started calling him “the professor”, and he started calling me “the doctor”. So, it was just between us…we were buddies, we had our nicknames, and we would roll with the nicknames. …And that’s where it came from.”
Erving enrolled at the University of Massachusetts in 1968. In two varsity college basketball seasons, he averaged 26.3 pointsand 20.2 rebounds per game, becoming one of only six playersto average more than 20 points and 20 rebounds per game in NCAA Men’s Basketball. He then sought “hardship” entry into professional basketball in 1971.
Erving won three championships, four Most Valuable Player Awards, and three scoring titles with the ABA’s Virginia Squires and New York Nets (now the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets) and the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers. During his 16 seasons as a player, none of his teams ever missed the postseason. He is the eighth-highest scorer in ABA/NBA history with 30,026 points (NBA and ABA combined). He was well known for slam dunking from the free-throw line in slam dunk contests and was the only player voted Most Valuable Player in both the ABA and the NBA. The basketball slang of being posterized was first coined to describe his moves.
Erving was inducted in 1993 into the Basketball Hall of Fame and was also named to the NBA’s 50th Anniversary All-Time team. In 1994, Erving was named by Sports Illustrated as one of the 40 most important athletes of all time. In 2004, he was inducted into the Nassau County Sports Hall of Fame.
Many consider him one of the most talented players in the history of the NBA; he is widely acknowledged as one of the game’s best dunkers.
Carmelo Anthony
Carmelo Anthony was born in Brooklyn, New York on May 29, 1984. Anthony was born in the Red Hook housing projects in Brooklyn, New York City.
When Anthony turned eight, his family moved to Baltimore, where he honed not only his athletic skills, but his survival skills. Kenny Minor, one of Anthony’s childhood friends, said, “from drugs to killings, to anything you can name that goes on in the roughest parts of town, we’ve seen and witnessed hands on.
Those are the things that teach you toughness and keep you mentally focused on your goals.” Sports would serve as an important diversion from the violence and drug dealing that were pervasive in the housing projects a few blocks from the homes of Anthony and his friends.
Anthony played one season at Syracuse University, during the 2002–03 season, where he averaged 22.2 points (16th in the NCAA, fourth in the Big East) and 10.0 rebounds (19th in the NCAA, third in the Big East, first among NCAA Division I freshmen). He helped guide the Orangemen to their first ever NCAA tournament title in 2003.
He led the team in scoring, rebounding, minutes played (36.4 minutes per game), field goals made, and free throws made and attempted. Anthony’s 33-point outburst against the University of Texas in the Final Four set an NCAA tournament record for most points by a freshman.
In the championship game against the University of Kansas, Anthony had 20 points and 10 rebounds. For his efforts during the NCAA tournament, Anthony earned the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player Award.[26] Afterwards, Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim described Anthony as “[…] by far, the best player in college basketball. It wasn’t even close. Nobody was even close to him last year in college basketball. That’s the bottom line”.
Although he has yet to win an NBA championship, Anthony has a storied NBA career. He is a 10-time NBA All-Star, an NBA scoring champion in the 2013 season, an NBA All-Rookie First Team, and an NBA Social Justice Champion Award winner.