Stephen Curry and the suburbanizing of the NBA

To the surprise of no one, the Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry is reportedly the NBA’s Most Valuable Player for the second year in a row.

While Curry’s win reinforces his position as today’s preeminent point guard, it also illustrates a decades-long shift in the story of professional basketball.

For a long time, the idea of the inner-city phenom has held sway. In the case of LeBron James, who was born to a poor, teen mother in Akron, Ohio, this tale is true. But it turns out that James is the exception, and Curry, who grew up in an affluent neighborhood outside of Charlotte, N.C., as the son of a former NBA player, is the rule.

That wasn’t always the case. The NBA was once a league where young men from the inner-city dominated the game. As ESPN’s Peter Keating points out, during “1960s and ’70s, more than 90 percent of NBA players were from urban areas.” Greats like the Wilt Chamberlain, Dr. J, Nate Archibald, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Elgin Baylor grew up poor in city housing projects. But that’s changed. These days, both black and white players are far more likely to have come from economic privilege.

A 2010 article in the International Review for the Sociology of Sport looked at the backgrounds of NBA players from 1994 to 2004. Among all NBA players during that period, “66 percent of African Americans and 93 percent of whites have advantaged social background.” In fact, NBA players who were raised in poverty and broken homes made up a minority of the league. The researchers found that “45 percent of African-American male children live in a lower social class context, while only 34 percent of African-American NBA players come from lower social class background. Similarly, 23 percent of white male children live in a lower social class context, while only 7 percent of white NBA players were from a lower social class background.”

Another study, authored in 2013 by New York Times writer Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, corroborated those findings, concluding that “growing up in a wealthier neighborhood is a major, positive predictor of reaching the NBA for both black and white men.” Comparing black NBA players born in the 1980s and the quality of the upbringing to the average black male, Stephens-Davidowitz estimates that NBA players are 30 percent less likely to be born to an unmarried mother and a teenage mother. In the third study, a 2009 article in The Mag found that NBA players were most likely to grow up in towns with a median population of 110,000 where the population is almost 60 percent white and educated.

Since the 1970s, the business of the NBA has boomed. In 1970, the average salary for an NBA player was $35,000 dollars. A decade later it increased to $180,000. Today, the median wage for a NBA player is over $4 million. Investing in the athletic abilities of young men is financially prudent. So much so that pre-teen boys exhibiting basketball talent are sent to private programs and trainers in order to better mine their physical and financial potential.

It’s a pipeline that’s now a generation old. Steph Curry was the 7th draft pick by the Warriors in 2009. There were two other sons of former NBA players picked in that years draft: Gerald Henderson at #12 and Austin Daye at #15. It marked the first time that NBA progeny were selected in the top 15 of the draft.

Curry is not the first MVP to come from means, however. The recently retired Kobe Bryant, who won the league’s MVP in 2008, was also the son of Joe Bryant, a pro basketball player who played for the Philadelphia 76ers in the late 70s. Steve Nash came from a middle class Canadian family. Even Michael Jordan grew up in economically secure conditions. But Steph Curry is better off and better connected than any previous MVP. Rags-to-riches stories like LeBron James’ are becoming increasingly scarce.