![]() ![]() The native of Anchorage eventually played high school ball there before departing for a warmer climate at the University of Kansas, where he’d lead the Jayhawks to an NCAA championship in 2008. While the northernmost state might not be a haven for hoops talent, it has given us a very good player in Chalmers. His Hall-of-Fame NBA career took him from Philadelphia to Phoenix to Houston but Barkley still loves his home state, even considering a run for governor in years past.ĪP Photo/Bill Chan Alaska - Mario ChalmersĪccording to the exhaustive database of player birthplaces compiled at Basketball Reference, Mario Chalmers is the only player in NBA history to come from Alaska. The NBA’s most valuable player for the 1993 season and 11-time All-Star was born in Leeds and stayed in Alabama to play college basketball at Auburn, where he was named SEC player of the year in 1984. That was the case with Charles Barkley, whose roots in Alabama run deep. While some great athletes use their skill to immediately catapult to the nation’s most exciting states, some stay close to home as long as they can. Some states offered obvious answers while others are ripe for debate, but here are our picks for the best NBA player to come from every state. Unlike the NFL, which is still almost entirely packed with American players, and the NHL and MLB, which see their foreign-born stars come from a handful of countries in specific areas, the NBA’s stars come from all corners of the globe.īut let’s take a look at the best basketball players to come from the United States. It's not a coincidence that they look like a completely different team with their 7-1 center anchoring the middle.Perhaps more than any of the other mainstream American sports, basketball has embraced its standing as an international game. Getting him back will be important for us."Īt just 4-11 before Poeltl started getting regular minutes again, San Antonio has since gone 6-5 to climb up to 10-16 and get closer to being back into play-in tournament contention. "Jakob is very important to us," Coach Popovich said upon his return on November 18th. They were just 2-5 earlier this season when he missed time due to health and safety protocols. It's no secret that having Poeltl on the floor directly impacts how well the Spurs perform on both ends of the floor. If his overall efficiency in blocking shots isn't enough, Poeltl is also first in the league in contested shots per game with 13.2. "Jakob Poeltl is just being Jakob Poeltl." ? /S49t45ELh9- San Antonio Spurs February 13, 2021 ![]() Only George Johnson, who played 157 total games with the Spurs from 1980-82, has a higher block percentage than Poeltl and Robinson with a seemingly uncatchable mark of 7.9%. Jakob Poeltl's defensive effectiveness is rivaling David Robinsonīeyond having a comfortable edge over Tim Duncan's 4.6% career mark, Poeltl's 5.6% is currently tied with David Robinson, who finished his career with 2,954 career swats. As it stands, Jakob Poeltl is blocking 5.6% of all two-point attempts taken while he's on the floor. Poeltl is quickly climbing up the Spurs' all-time leaderboard in overall career block percentage.Īs defined by Basketball Reference, block percentage is an estimate of the percentage of opponent two-point field goal attempts blocked by a given player while they're on the floor. While he's barely in the top 10 in the NBA in blocks per game as of Monday with 1.6 per, it's a different aspect of the Austrian center's presence that really drives San Antonio's top 10 defense. It's not often you'll see me compare a current member of the San Antonio Spurs with the great Tim Duncan, but Jakob Poeltl's defense has just been that good. ![]()
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