Fellow WordPress site, SPORTCHART, recently put together an interesting series of maps detailing where in the US and around the world athletes in major sports come from. Here’s the map for the NBA:
The top-4 cities in the US are Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, which shouldn’t be huge surprises as those are historically big centers for basketball. I thought this was interesting though because I was actually thinking of creating a similar map of where players drafted in the lottery are from. Unfortunately, I never I got around to creating it, but I think it could be an interesting idea to examine. Peep the link to see the other charts – where NHL and MLB players come from. Also, feel free to check out the rest of the SPORTSCHART blog. It has some interesting sports data visualization ideas and techniques.