The Caribbean has been a basketball hotbed over the years. From Hall of Famers (Patrick Ewing, Tim Duncan) to modern-day stars (Al Horford, Jonquel Jones), if you want a window into the growing reach of the global game, set your sights for its golden shores.
That pipeline has continued to churn top-tier products in recent years. DeAndre Ayton, a native Bahamian, has made himself a big part of the Suns since arriving as the first overall pick in the 2018 NBA Draft.
There's another prospective first selection lurking, one who projects to be an even bigger star than Ayton: South Carolina's Aliyah Boston. She's a national player of the year winner, a national champion and one of the biggest names in college hoops. She's also a Virgin Islands native who's hoping to follow in the footsteps of Duncan, the archipelago's greatest talent.
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The Sporting News fills you in on how Boston's St. Thomian ancestry has influenced her over the course of her playing career.
Where is Aliyah Boston from?
If Boston is any indication, it seems the glimmering expanse of the Atlantic Ocean is a perfect backdrop for hooping greatness.
Boston was born and raised in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, the same hometown as such historical dignitaries as Denmark Vesey and Edward Wilmot Blyden.
Boston's passion for the game came from her older sister, Alexis, who was the first Boston sibling to pick up a basketball.
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With few outlets for basketball-crazed youths — and even fewer outlets for young girls — Boston often was the only girl on the court.
But hoop knows no gender. And after making waves on the St. Thomas asphalt, Boston began to earn quite the reputation.
"I saw some signs in her," Boston's youth coach Russell Brawley told ESPN's Holly Rowe. "In seventh grade I told her mother she was a D-I prospect. . . . I told her mother she had to get out from the island."
Boston's skills were undeniable. But the competition she was facing was less than the best.
"You play the same team over and over and over," Boston's mother, Cleone, told Rowe. "Everybody knows what the next person's going to do so your ability to play competition outside of that circle is non-existent. She needed an opportunity to see who she could become."
That opportunity arose a few years later. After Aliyah made her mark stateside in various camps, Aliyah and Alexis left home, moving in with their aunt in Worcester, Mass. Boston continued to strut her stuff on the court, earning three Gatorade Player of the Year awards. She earned five-star billing as a recruit, drawing interest from a number of schools, including Dawn Staley's South Carolina.
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The rest is history; Boston is a national champion, the prospective No. 1 pick in the 2023 WNBA Draft and one of the most popular players in the country. But she hasn't forgotten her roots; not for a second.
Whenever she returns home she's greeted as royalty, her friends and family coming together to embrace her with all the flavors of her hometown. The sweet swirl of curry chicken, the mesmerizing hum of calypso; it can all make for quite the homecoming.
Boston has already cemented herself as an island legend. With a lengthy professional career on the horizon, she'll have a chance to take her hometown to even greater heights as a gleaming star from the gleaming sands of St. Thomas.