Basketball Culture Shift

It seems as if New York City, a mecca of basketball, has gone past its glory days and now Jersey City has taken that place. New York City has been revered as a city that has produced basketball phonemes like Connie Hawkins, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Bernard King. But, in recent years the new hotspot for NBA talent happens to be New Jersey. Throughout the last ten NBA drafts, New Jersey schools has produced twice as many first round picks than New York has. More and more basketball talent that have grown in the city migrated to top tier high schools in New Jersey because of this culture shift. New York City still has prominent talent like Isaiah Whitehead who is in the top 10 of his class, but coaches are beginning to see up and coming eighth graders committing to schools in New Jersey where they would have to take the PATH train to get to their respective schools.