My comments were about the other killings down there that teamsmoothie brought up. Not the city itself. Just to clarify my thoughts. That being said, do you think it's good for a player such as Tony Allen to go from a city like Boston to a city like Memphis? He seemed pretty emersed in the Chicago gang culture. But seemed to put that behind him while he was here. From an NBA perspective Memphis has a lot of vice like attributes that can be major selling points to a player. Mainly clubs and strip clubs. There's actually a few cities known to lure free agents in this way. But I just see it as a regression in Tonys transformation and can't help but be concerned for his future down there. That's all. Nothing against Memphis itself.
Every city has these attributes you're talking about. If Tony wants to find trouble, he can do it anywhere. Stephen Jackson found trouble repeatedly in Indianapolis, then somehow cleaned up in places like San Francisco and Charlotte, places with worse reputations and more opportunities for "vice like attributes."
So did Jamaal Tinsley, Shawne Williams, and (indirectly) Marquis Daniels. So many players found trouble in Indianapolis that Bird wound up blowing up the team through one-sided trades or paying them not to show up.
Cities don't make players do anything; it's all about the opportunities for trouble and whether the guy tends to make decisions that up the chance of trouble. Every city big enough to have an NBA team has those opportunities (yes, even SLC), it's just which guys wind up there really.