Where famous basketball players grew up and lived

Bill Russell1943–1952

📍 West Oakland, Oakland, California, USA

I was born in Monroe, Louisiana, where segregation and racist humiliation were part of daily life. My father, Charlie, refused to bow to it, and my parents decided they would not raise…

Caitlin Clark2002–2020

📍 West Des Moines, Iowa, USA

Caitlin Clark was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in January 2002 and grew up in West Des Moines, a comfortable, fast-growing suburb on the western edge of Iowa's capital. Her father, Brent, had…

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar1950–1965

📍 Dyckman Houses, Inwood, Manhattan, New York, NY 10034, USA

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr. in Harlem in April 1947, the only child of Cora, a department-store price checker, and Ferdinand Sr., a transit police officer who…

Kobe Bryant1991–1996

📍 Wynnewood, Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, USA

I was born in Philadelphia in August 1978, the son of Joe Bryant, a former NBA player known as Jellybean, and Pam, and I spent most of my childhood in Italy, where my father played…

Larry Bird1956–1974

📍 French Lick, Indiana, USA

Larry Bird grew up in French Lick and West Baden Springs, small resort towns in the hills of southern Indiana, famous for their grand old spa hotels but struggling in his childhood. His…

LeBron James1984–2003

📍 Akron, Ohio, USA

LeBron James was born in Akron, Ohio, on 30 December 1984, when his mother, Gloria, was sixteen. For his first few years they lived with four generations of the family in a big old house on…

Magic Johnson1959–1977

📍 Lansing, Michigan, USA

Earvin Johnson Jr. was born in Lansing, Michigan, in August 1959, one of ten children of Earvin Sr., who worked on the assembly line at a General Motors plant and ran a rubbish-hauling…

Manny Pacquiao1990–1995

📍 General Santos City, South Cotabato, Philippines

Manny Pacquiao was born in December 1978 in Kibawe, in the mountains of Bukidnon province on the island of Mindanao, in the southern Philippines, into a very poor family, in a thatched…

Michael Jordan1963–1981

📍 4647 Gordon Road, Wilmington, NC 28411, USA

Michael Jeffrey Jordan was born in Brooklyn, New York, in February 1963, and his family moved to Wilmington, on the coast of North Carolina, when he was a small child. His father, James…

Shaquille O'Neal1987–1989

📍 San Antonio, Texas, USA

Shaquille O'Neal was born in Newark, New Jersey, in March 1972, and raised by his mother, Lucille, and his stepfather, Phillip Harrison, an army sergeant. Military life meant constant…

Stephen Curry1988–2006

📍 Charlotte, North Carolina, USA

Stephen Curry was born in Akron, Ohio, in March 1988, and when he was a baby his father, Dell Curry, was chosen by the new Charlotte Hornets in the NBA expansion draft, so the family moved…

Wilt Chamberlain1936–1955

📍 Overbrook, West Philadelphia, PA 19151, USA

I was born in Philadelphia in August 1936, one of nine surviving children of William Chamberlain, a welder and handyman, and Olivia, a domestic worker. We lived in a modest row house in…