How many U.S. States could win gold?
How many U.S. States could win gold?
California, New Jersey, Ohio and about a dozen other States have a strong case.
A quick stroll through history. Arvydas Sabonis, Sarunas Marciulionis and the Soviet Union took home gold in Seoul in the 1988 Summer Olympics. The reign, however, was short-lived. By the time the 1992 Summer Olympics came around, the Soviet Union had fallen, and with it, its claim to the basketball throne.
Instead, in Barcelona, hoop stars Sabonis and Marciulionis suited up for newly-independent Lithuania and famously won bronze (in Grateful Dead t-shirts). What was left of the Soviet Union – an assembled team called Unified – ended up losing to Lithuania 87-78 for the third-place medal. Two other ex-Soviet republics competed – Latvia and Estonia – but didn’t qualify for the 1992 Summer Olympics.
With this history in mind, my post last week, comparing the flattened 1992 talent levels to 2024, sparked a hypothetical.
Let’s imagine an alternate universe in which the United States of America broke up (HYPOTHETICALLY SPEAKING) and each state competed in the Olympics as its own squad.
Could one of those un-United States win Gold?
And how many could realistically win?
And – gasp – would the un-United States sweep the medal ceremony?
After looking into it, I think it’d be an upset if they didn’t.
Let me show you.
First, we have to figure out the squads. This was, as you might imagine, a migraine-inducing endeavor.
The cleanest way to sort all all talent, though perhaps not the most accurate method, is to choose states by birth. I’ll be the first to admit it’s not perfect. For instance, Stephen Curry would play for Ohio (that other kid from Akron) rather than North Carolina where he grew up. Overall, though, birth state does a pretty good job organizing 500 or so players. Using Basketball Reference, we can find all the American-born players and allocate the names into separate buckets by their birth state.
To assemble the rosters, I pulled up American-born players that suited up in the NBA at any time over the last three seasons. For the handful of Americans who were not born in the United States, like Kyrie Irving (born in Australia) and Cam Thomas (Japan), I made an executive decision for their state based on their youth.
To qualify for this fake Olympics, I only used states that could field a tryout of at least eight NBA players that have played in the league over the last three seasons. This turned out to be a very low bar. Over half the states – TWENTY-SEVEN to be precise – have seen at least eight players come through the NBA recently.
Think about that. Considering that only three non-USA teams in the real 2024 Olympics have at least eight NBA players, there’s reason to believe that the vast majority of the 50 U.S. States have enough talent to qualify for the Olympics.
(Of course, only a few teams can make it from every world region so it’s not like we’d see nothing but U.S. States in the Olympics.)
Not every state made the cut. Apologies to the following teams that didn’t pass the Finder test:
7 players - Kansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi; 5 players - Iowa, Nevada; 3 players - Delaware; 2 players - Connecticut, Rhode Island, Utah, Colorado; 1 player - Maine, Nebraska, Alaska, Wyoming; 0 players - Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia.
The only one on this cut list that I’m a little hesitant to nix is Iowa – Harrison Barnes and the Murray brothers are a strong core. But could they win a medal in this alternate universe? I don’t think so. Well, maybe if they add Caitlin Clark…
Oh, and this fact tickled me: Colorado has only TWO players in the NBA and they’re both elite – Boston’s Derrick White and OKC’s Jalen Williams. Now how ‘bout about a 2x2 squad…
OK, with the honorable mentions out of the way, let’s size up the competition.
Here are my 10-person rosters (where applicable), breaking out into tiers and then my pick for the medals. I’ve also listed the number of natives in the NBA over the last three seasons. At the bottom, you’ll find the Total WS/82 of the 10-player roster. For that metric, I am summing up each player’s win shares per 82 games over the last three seasons.
I didn’t follow any hard rubric picking the starting lineups and 10-player rosters. It’s the opinion of one – me. Let’s have some fun.
Tier 1
California | 69 players
Starters: Damian Lillard, Jrue Holiday, Paul George, Kawhi Leonard, Jarrett Allen.
Bench: James Harden, LaMelo Ball, DeMar DeRozan, Aaron Gordon, Evan Mobley.
They don’t call it the Golden State for nothing. They can basically field a team of All-Stars. To put Cali’s strength in perspective, there are more California-born players in the NBA than Texas and Ohio natives combined. Their F squad could probably qualify for the Olympics, too.
Total WS/82: 87.1