DJ Steward: After my freshman year, I got my first offer. Heading into the summer, I had a lot of confidence. I was playing with Meanstreets, and my games continued to develop like that sophomore summer, and I was really good. I was doing well, and then summer came back around, and I wasn’t doing as well as I was before. I dropped off in the rankings, like I went unranked.
That kind of had a chip on my shoulder, and after my sophomore year, I made a decision. I transferred to Whitney Young, a high school in Chicago, where I was in my junior year. And that year, I was like, “All right, this is a time where I’m on a national-scale schedule.”
So, I just developed my game. I got to know my teammates well, my coaches, Coach Tyrone Slaughter, and I became really aggressive. My game started to change, and I started working really hard.
I started taking my craft more seriously and dominated my junior year. Then, heading into my senior season, everything just started changing. A lot of offers started coming in, a lot of eyes, a lot of reporters, and stuff came out to me after every game and followed me. I was one of the leaders for EYBL in scoring. And that’s when I got my offer from Duke, and I remember that call, Coach Mike Krzyzewski called me, telling me he’s offering me everything.
Then, I headed into college being one of the best recruits. We had one of the best freshman classes coming into Duke. We had about three or four five-stars, and a couple of four-stars.
That year, it didn’t work out like [cause of] COVID stuff. I feel like it really held us back from getting to know each other and building that team camaraderie. We weren’t really able to build that chemistry like a lot of college teams can. And we were a young team, so it was tough for us.
