Walt Frazier grew up in Atlanta when it was still segregated and learned to play basketball on a ratty outdoors court because that’s all his school was allowed.
He was also an outstanding baseball player and a highly promising quarterback, but he stuck with basketball because, as he put it, there were no black quarterbacks.
He went to Southern Illinois which, culturally, is pretty southern, from 1963-1977. The Salukis went to the NIT in his senior year and won it in the final college game in the old Garden.
Perhaps impressed, the Knicks drafted him and he became the point guard of the most glorious era in the history of the Knickerbockers.