Who are the best and second-best NBA players of all time from all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands?
This article will tell you — and may also infuriate you.
Let the debates begin. And believe us, some of these debates are agonizing. Consider the confounding case of Louisiana. Six Hall of Famers grew up in the Bayou State: Joe Dumars, Elvin Hayes, Karl Malone, Robert Parish, Bob Pettit and Willis Reed. Who was the greatest NBA player among them? That’s a relatively easy question. Who was the second-greatest player? That’s an excruciating question.
Part of what made this endeavor so difficult was figuring out where players grew up. Birthplaces don’t necessarily tell us where a person is from. Oscar Robertson, for instance, was born in Tennessee, but his family moved to Indianapolis when he was a toddler. So we consider him a Hoosier.