{"id":909723,"date":"2026-09-29T11:22:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T11:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/909723\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T11:22:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T11:22:14","slug":"the-nbas-missing-state-the-ringer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/909723\/","title":{"rendered":"The NBA\u2019s Missing State – The Ringer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

NBA<\/p>\n

<\/a>Vermont is the only state that has never produced an NBA player, but its basketball culture is alive and \u2026 well, it\u2019s alive\"\"NBA<\/a>Vermont is the only state that has never produced an NBA player, but its basketball culture is alive and \u2026 well, it\u2019s aliveGetty Images\/Ringer illustration\"\"<\/a>By Jack McCluskey<\/a>Sept. 29, 10:30 am UTC \u2022 12 min<\/p>\n

Steve Pratt laughed. Cackled, really.<\/p>\n

Pratt is a longtime basketball trainer and skills coach who\u2019s worked with the likes of Elton Brand, Jon Scheyer, Brad Miller, Jewell Loyd, Matas Buzelis, and Terrence Shannon Jr. over the years. He\u2019s a self-described \u201ckid from fucking rural Vermont\u201d who came to the game in college only after he realized he wouldn\u2019t make it as a football player.<\/p>\n

He got cut from the Johnson State College hoops team as a freshman, but the coach allowed him to hang around and work out with the squad anyway because it was clear he loved the game. He would do anything to be around basketball.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t have a pickup game on Saturday morning, so I hitchhiked up to Rutland because I knew guys got together and played there,\u201d Pratt says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After making the team at Johnson State as a sophomore, Pratt worked his way into the starting lineup. And post-graduation, he got into coaching\u2014winning a state title with Hazen Union High School in 1996\u2014and then skill development, starting Full Package Athletics outside Chicago in 2000. \u201cI\u2019m like a weird story where I was able to kind of develop pro development skills in Vermont \u2026 [because] I was aggressively pursuing and learning the craft.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh, right: The reason Pratt practically squealed with amusement? This question: \u201cIs Vermont just not a place the NBA turns its attention to?\u201d<\/p>\n

Five seconds of laughter later, Pratt responded: \u201cAre you being serious? Are you asking me a serious question?\u201d<\/p>\n

Alaska has two. Hawaii has two. And the Dakotas could combine for a full game of five-on-five with a solid bench.<\/p>\n

Heck, Estonia, Mali, and Tanzania have each produced more NBA players than the Green Mountain State. In fact, Vermont is the only state that has never had a native in the Association.<\/p>\n

One of these kids makes it, he\u2019s going to have an entire state rallying behind him.<\/p>\n

Will Voigt<\/p>\n

The closest the state has come in the past quarter century is Taylor Coppenrath, who, after starring at the University of Vermont (where he tied the record for most consecutive America East MVP awards set by Reggie Lewis) from 2001-02 to 2004-05, went undrafted, played in summer league for the Celtics and Pacers \u2026 and never cracked a regular-season roster. To find the last time a Vermonter was drafted, you have to go way back, to the age of short shorts and long drafts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was the \u201980s. A decade that started with an NBA draft that was a mammoth 10 and ended with a draft that was much slimmer, featuring the two rounds we recognize today. With so many picks to go around, teams could afford to take a flier on a slim, 6-foot-2 scorer like Holy Cross star Jim McCaffrey. And the Phoenix Suns decided to do just that in the sixth round of the 1986 draft, taking the Rutland, Vermont, lad with their eighth pick. Not the eighth pick; their eighth pick, and the 123rd overall pick of the draft.<\/p>\n

McCaffrey faced an uphill climb to a roster spot, in other words. And though the Rutland Herald reported that he outshot the other rookie guards in camp, finishing 16-for-24 from the field, he got cut. (One of the guards the Suns kept over him? A second-rounder named Jeff Hornacek.)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they cut me, they said they had obligations and interests in players who maybe didn\u2019t play as well,\u201d McCaffrey told the paper in July 1986. \u201cI told them that\u2019s probably why they\u2019re 30-60.\u201d (In fairness to the Suns, they went 32-50 in \u201985-86.)<\/p>\n

After he was cut by Phoenix, McCaffrey snagged a spot in a rookie tryout camp with the Celtics. He figured playing college ball in nearby Worcester had helped him land a shot with Boston and vowed, \u201cI\u2019m going to keep trying out \u2019til I make it. Someone, somewhere, is going to have to take me.\u201d<\/p>\n

About that \u2026 McCaffrey didn\u2019t make the cut in Boston, though he was briefly teammates with Larry Bird \u2026 kind of. In 1987, the two appeared together in a Nestle Crunch commercial. McCaffrey played a janitor whose loud chocolate bar crunching in the empty arena keeps causing Bird to miss shots. After tossing a bar to Bird, McCaffrey unleashes some nifty ballhandling moves before letting one fly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then Bird\u2019s loud crunch causes McCaffrey to miss his shot, too. He never got another.<\/p>\n

Before Cooper Flagg went first in the 2025 draft, the longest statewide drought between draftees belonged to Maine, which hadn\u2019t seen a native son selected for 41 years (since Jeff Turner went to the Nets in 1984), according to NBA draft historian Matthew Maurer<\/a>. After that streak ended, the (dubious) honor simply hopped a couple of mountain ranges and skipped a couple of borders over to Vermont.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Longest NBA Draft Pick Droughts by State<\/p>\n

THE RINGER<\/p>\n

While Vermont may not have produced an NBA player to date, it\u2019d be wrong to say there\u2019s no athletic talent in the state. Vermonters have played in the three other major American professional leagues, dotting NHL rosters (St. Albans\u2019s John LeClair played in five All-Star Games during his 16-year career), dashing around MLB fields (Middlebury\u2019s Ray Fisher pitched for 10 seasons in the bigs, then coached Michigan\u2019s men\u2019s baseball team for 38 years), and gamboling on NFL grass (Rutland\u2019s Steve Wisniewski played 13 years in the NFL, making eight Pro Bowls and two All-Pro teams). They\u2019ve hit the links (Keegan Bradley\u2019s from Woodstock and owns eight PGA Tour wins) and the racetrack (Kevin Lepage is from Shelburne and raced in NASCAR\u2019s Winston Cup). There\u2019s even been a Vermonter in the WNBA: Nicole Levesque (Shaftsbury) played 27 games for the Charlotte Sting in the W\u2019s inaugural season in 1997.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Oh, and they\u2019ve been all over Team USA rosters at the Winter Olympics\u2014in the 2026 event in Italy, Ben Ogden (Landgrove) won the first U.S. men\u2019s cross-country skiing medal in 50 years (then added a second later in the Games), and Ryan Cochran-Siegle (Starksboro) won a silver medal in super-G, 54 years after his mom, Barbara, won gold in Sapporo.<\/p>\n

The NBA drought continues, though, and 40 years after the 1986 NBA draft, McCaffrey is still the most recent Vermonter to be selected. And like a winding mountain road in winter, the end is not necessarily in sight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To date, Vermont\u2019s high-water mark in the NBA came in February 2025, when its first native logged a few minutes on the hardwood.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I refer, of course, to Noah Kahan, proud Vermonter and famous \u201cStick Season<\/a>\u201d musician, who suited up for the celebrity game at All-Star Weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kahan\u2019s wry Vermont sense of humor comes through in the Instagram caption he wrote after the event:<\/p>\n

bucket (noun)<\/p>\n

a roughly cylindrical open container, typically made of metal or plastic, with a handle, used to hold and carry liquids or other material<\/p>\n

Example \u201ca bucket and spade\u201d
Or \u201cnoah kahan is a walking bucket\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He scored two points. (One-time New Englander and noted blogger<\/a> Luke Kornet was probably not impressed<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Kahan broke into the mainstream with a song about life in Vermont, so it\u2019s not surprising that he talks a lot about the state on his 2026 album, The Great Divide. And while it\u2019s not explicitly about the future of basketball in the Green Mountains, this lyric from \u201cDoors\u201d might as well be:<\/p>\n

You\u2019re putting money on red
I\u2019m a sure bet at a losing streak.
I keep showing you doors, but you can\u2019t open them up.
\u2019Cause it gets harder to see me the closer you try to look.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Katie Nolan ahead of the release of his album, Kahan joked about his appearance at the celebrity game. \u201cI didn\u2019t play basketball growing up, as you could see if you watched the game,\u201d he quipped.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was unbelievable in the practice round the night before. I had literally a Like Mike moment where I just started being really good at basketball. But \u2026 Barry Bonds [was the coach] the next day, and he hadn\u2019t seen me. And so he saw me in the warm-up line, and he was like, \u2018Oh, hell no. You\u2019re not going in. You suck.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Like many Vermonters, Kahan rooted for most of the Boston teams\u2014the Red Sox, Bruins, and Celtics\u2014growing up, though mostly from afar. The drive down to Boston from his hometown of Strafford, Vermont, takes two and a half hours without traffic, so the Kahans didn\u2019t attend many games in person. He played soccer as a kid\u2014he told Nolan he\u2019s a big Chelsea fan\u2014and loves golf.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

When the Knicks won their first title in 53 years in June, Kahan caused a minor stir on X by joking about his fandom:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Really, though, it was just another chance to rep a Vermont basketball success story:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Why have Vermonters been such a bad bet to make it in the NBA? To paraphrase the old saw about what wins elections, \u201cIt\u2019s the demographics, stupid.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

As of the 2024 census, Vermont had the second-smallest population (648,493<\/a>) in the country, ahead of only Wyoming (587,618<\/a>, with a claim to eight NBA players in its history and the fifth-longest drought between draft picks). For reference, the city of Boston\u2014the 25th-most populous city in the country, according to Data Commons\u2014has more residents (672,973<\/a>) than the entire state of Vermont.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what the demographics of the state are today,\u201d said Will Voigt, a Cabot native and the associate head coach at Boise State, \u201cbut if you look at the demographics of the NBA, I guarantee you that the makeup of Vermont is probably the opposite of those.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vermont was 89 percent white in 2024, according to Census Reporter<\/a>. That\u2019s the highest figure in the country. In the 2022-23 season, the NBA was 82.5 percent people of color, according to a study by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports at the University of Central Florida.<\/p>\n

Vermont is also, as anyone from there will tell you, very rural. It\u2019s made up of small towns, often spread out, and sometimes separated by literal mountains. People there tend to develop tight bonds in their small communities and sometimes seem disinclined to leave them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was growing up, there was no prep school or whatever it might be where you\u2019re like, \u2026 \u2018I\u2019m better than the competition in the state, so let me go to this private school,\u2019\u201d Voigt said. \u201cIt\u2019s not in our mindset. You wouldn\u2019t even think of leaving your local school for a better school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Longtime Sports Illustrated writer Alexander Wolff, who\u2019s authored multiple books on basketball, moved to Vermont years ago and has become something of an authority on the sport in the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cBurlington has a very suburban quality to it,\u201d Wolff said of Vermont\u2019s largest city. \u201cThat\u2019s not exactly the EYBL. It\u2019s not a proving ground for the next generation of D-I athletes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Wolff saw a clear love for the game, in packed high school gyms and in the ability of both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams at the University of Vermont to draw crowds to their home games at Patrick Gymnasium. So Wolff and his wife, Vanessa, cofounded a professional basketball team there in 2005. The Vermont Frost Heaves\u2014named for an all-too-common occurrence in the Green Mountain State, where the freeze-thaw-freeze cycle causes soil to expand upward, cracking pavement and leaving bumps on all manner of byways\u2014were made up of guys who played at small Division I or Division II schools or in lower-level European leagues and a few local strivers. They drew enthusiastic, vociferous crowds\u2014their idea to hand out cowbells, as an ode to the state\u2019s dairy roots and as a way to amp up the in-arena noise, worked almost too well\u2014and won back-to-back championships in their first two seasons in the American Basketball Association with Voigt as their head coach.<\/p>\n

\"\"Bump, the Vermont Frost Heaves mascot, interacts with fans in 2006AP Photo\/Toby Talbot<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d love to sit here and tell you that the Frost Heaves touched off this great grassroots flowering that led to Division I rosters being stocked with people who were inspired by John Bryant and Aaron Cook and guys you\u2019ve never heard of who were stars for us, but that\u2019s not what happened,\u201d Wolff said. \u201cWe\u2019re simply the answer to the trivia question: \u2018Which team besides the Indiana Pacers won back-to-back ABA titles?\u2019 We\u2019ll go to our grave with that distinction.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Frost Heaves\u2019 ABA was plagued by financial issues and featured multiple teams that started seasons they never finished. And when the Great Recession hit in 2007, the already daunting task of raising enough cash to pay the players and coaches, rent an arena, and cover travel and lodging became too much for the Frost Heaves, and the team folded in 2011. But during their brief existence, the Frost Heaves performed for big crowds, thanks to the locals\u2019 passion for the game and the tireless work of Wolff, the players and coaches, and the team\u2019s moose mascot, Bump. (Frost Heaves, Bump, get it?)<\/p>\n

Wolff says the team won because of Voigt\u2019s coaching and because it imported most of its talent. It was too hard to find natives who had enough juice to play big minutes.<\/p>\n

On our running list of reasons Vermont is NBA-player-less, add to demographics a lack of infrastructure\u2014both in facilities and in abilities.<\/p>\n

Aaron Hill is the athletic director at Hazen Union School in Hardwick, and the longtime boys\u2019 basketball coach there. He\u2019s led the Wildcats to six Division III state championships and four runner-up finishes. One way he\u2019s done that?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe keep the gym open almost all the time, and kids live in it,\u201d Hill said, \u201cbecause there\u2019s nowhere else to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Basketball courts aren\u2019t exactly plentiful in the state, according to Hill, mostly limited to high school gyms and a couple of community centers in places like Burlington. You might find a run on an outdoor court, but only if you\u2019re lucky with both geography and meteorology.<\/p>\n

The high school basketball season is also shorter (20 games) in Vermont than it is in many other places, and until recently coaches weren\u2019t even allowed to work with players out of season. And the AAU scene that might have filled that gap doesn\u2019t exist at a high level in Vermont.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of these kids don\u2019t have access to high-level coaching or coaching with individual development in mind,\u201d Hill said. \u201cMainly everybody\u2019s focused on winning the state tournament or putting out the best team they can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where does that leave a basketball-loving kid who craves competition and has a decent amount of skill? Looking outside the state, to AAU programs in upstate New York or in Massachusetts, perhaps, or to prep schools like Montverde Academy, the one Flagg attended in Florida.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just doing the simple math of development,\u201d Pratt said. \u201cYou need pressure, right? You need to feel pressure. You need to play at a high level. You need to have teammates that play at a high level.\u201d<\/p>\n

To really give kids a chance at the next level, Hill says, there would need to be structural change in Vermont. More focus on individual development, and less on team cohesion aimed at making the state tourney in the Barre Auditorium, or the Aud, as locals call it (the same historic gym Wolff\u2019s Frost Heaves played half their home games in).<\/p>\n

A lot of these kids don\u2019t have access to high-level coaching or coaching with individual development in mind. Mainly everybody\u2019s focused on winning the state tournament or putting out the best team they can.<\/p>\n

Aaron Hill<\/p>\n

Where that change might come from is unclear. Messages The Ringer left with the office of longtime Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders went unanswered. (The senator is a hoops fan but may have other<\/a> things<\/a> on his<\/a> plate<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\u201cOur kids all talk about it,\u201d Hill said of making it to the NBA. \u201cAnd what an amazing feat it would be to be the first Vermonter to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than one person interviewed for this story pointed to Taylor Bol Bowen, a 6-foot-10, 202-pound forward who just transferred from Alabama to Oregon for his senior year, as the best bet to break through. Bowen, who was born in a South Sudanese refugee camp in Egypt and moved to Jericho, Vermont, where he was adopted as a 2-year-old, averaged 6.3 points and 4.2 rebounds in 19 minutes a game for the Crimson Tide in 2025-26.<\/p>\n

Though he lists Jericho as his hometown, Bowen played most of his high school ball in Rhode Island (at St. George\u2019s School) and New Hampshire (Brewster Academy) and got AAU reps with Expressions Basketball, a Nike EYBL program based in Boston. He played his first two seasons of college ball at Florida State before trading Tallahassee for Tuscaloosa, and then trading Tuscaloosa for Eugene. In short, Bowen\u2019s been on a journey\u2014one he hopes will end in the NBA.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019ve got it and you\u2019re a competitive person, it\u2019s in front of you now,\u201d Pratt said. \u201cAll you got to do is work for it. The problem is getting people to work for it consistently and just stay after it.\u201d<\/p>\n

And when someone eventually breaks through to the NBA? Well, the state will take notice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a sense of pride for one of their own,\u201d Voigt says of the drive to be the first. \u201cOne of these kids makes it, he\u2019s going to have an entire state rallying behind him.\u201d<\/p>\n

The door is there, waiting for the right person to open it up.<\/p>\n

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