Road to Duke
The same Duke uniform was hanging in his closet that had hung in his father's. David O'Connell wore Duke blue from 1973 to 1976 — a hyper-athletic guard who fought through knee injuries to suit up for Bill Foster in the years just before Mike Krzyzewski arrived in Durham. Forty years later, his middle son would put it on. The genes had been handed down. The fit at Duke was never going to be coincidence.
Alex was born June 2, 1999 in Baltimore, Maryland and raised in Roswell, Georgia. His mother Crystal and David raised three boys: Brady, the youngest. Shawn, the eldest, would grow into a 6'8" forward who'd later play at Georgia Southern. His uncles played at Notre Dame and Xavier. Alex was the middle son who grew tall, kept growing, and started filling up high school stat sheets at Milton High School in suburban Atlanta.
The summer of 2016 was the moment. O'Connell played for Team United on Nike's EYBL Gauntlet circuit and finished in the top 25 nationally in three-pointers made, averaging 14.1 points per game. He was invited to the NBPA Top 100 Camp, where he averaged 9.5 points. The recruiting rankings climbed: 247Sports moved him to No. 68 overall, ESPN to No. 85, Rivals to No. 55. Nine high-major programs offered scholarships. Louisville, Syracuse, UCLA, Connecticut, Miami, Texas A&M, Georgia Tech, NC State, and Ole Miss all wanted him.
Duke offered on a Wednesday night in late August 2016. He committed before the weekend was out.
"It was the right school and it was where I felt comfortable," O'Connell said. "Plus it's Duke basketball." He acknowledged the family history but insisted it wasn't the deciding factor: "It didn't impact my decision. It will be awesome to continue the legacy. I chose Duke because it was the right school." His father had worn the Duke uniform forty years earlier. Now Alex would wear the same one. The first commit of Duke's loaded 2017 class — the class that would end up bringing Marvin Bagley III, Wendell Carter Jr., Trevon Duval, and Gary Trent Jr. to Durham — was a 6-foot-6 sharpshooter from Roswell who had grown up watching his father's old Duke film.
"I think I could do really good things there," O'Connell said in 2016, before he had even arrived. "I could do just the same thing as Grayson Allen or Luke Kennard does now."
He arrived in the fall of 2017. He would spend the next three years discovering that doing the same thing as Grayson Allen or Luke Kennard — being the floor-spacing wing on a top-five Duke team — was harder than it looked when those guys made it look easy.
At Duke
O'Connell's freshman year was, statistically, his best at Duke. Playing behind Grayson Allen and the Bagley/Carter frontcourt rotation, he appeared in 36 games and averaged 3.3 points and 1.4 rebounds in 9.4 minutes per game — but the real number was 48.9% from three on 45 attempts. That was the highest three-point percentage on the entire Duke roster. He scored eight points in his Duke debut against Elon, hit two threes, and looked exactly like what the staff had recruited: a knockdown shooter you could throw onto the floor for stretches.
He also took a punch to the eye on Duke's preseason tour of Canada that required surgery to repair an orbital bone fracture. He returned for the regular season anyway. The toughness was never in question.
The sophomore year of 2018-19 was the breakthrough that almost was. With Zion Williamson, RJ Barrett, Cam Reddish, and Tre Jones forming one of the most-hyped Duke recruiting classes in program history, O'Connell was the rotational veteran on a team that finished 32-6 and reached the Elite Eight. He played 36 games, made seven starts, averaged 4.4 points and 1.9 rebounds in 14.0 minutes a contest, shot 44.7% from the field overall and 37.5% from three. The numbers don't capture the moment.
The moment came on February 23, 2019. Zion Williamson had blown out his shoe and sprained his knee three nights earlier in the loss to North Carolina at Cameron — the famous "Zion's shoe" game. Coach K rebuilt the starting lineup. O'Connell got the call to start at Syracuse in the Carrier Dome, his first career start, on a national stage with the No. 1 ranking on the line. RJ Barrett scored 30. O'Connell scored 20 — a career high — on 5-of-8 shooting from three. Five made threes in a single half. Duke won 75-65. He had earned his first of five consecutive starts in Williamson's absence.
A month later came the bookend moment. The Sweet 16 in Washington, DC against Virginia Tech. Cam Reddish was out with a knee injury. O'Connell didn't know he was starting until minutes before tipoff. He played a career-high 35 minutes, finished with four points, two assists, and a career-high seven rebounds. He didn't fill the box score the way he had at Syracuse. But he played the most minutes of his Duke career on the second-biggest stage of his Duke career, and Duke won. Three days later in the Elite Eight, Michigan State ended the season.
Junior year was supposed to be the leap. It was the regression. With the one-and-dones gone, O'Connell was supposed to step into a larger role on a younger team. Instead his shot fell off a cliff. He averaged 5.2 points and 2.2 rebounds in 13.3 minutes per game across 29 games — six starts — but shot just 27.3% from three after hitting 48.9% as a freshman and 37.5% as a sophomore. The decline was visible. The role got smaller as the season went on. By the end he was a 6-foot-6 shooting guard who had stopped making shots, on a Duke team that finished 25-6 before the COVID-19 pandemic ended the season without an NCAA Tournament.
In total: 101 games, 14 starts, 4.3 points and 1.8 rebounds per game across three seasons in Durham, 43.7% from the field and 36.1% from three for his Duke career. The career-high 20 against Syracuse was always there. So was the 16 against Syracuse the previous year at Cameron when he played 34 minutes with both Reddish and Tre Jones unavailable. Coaches noticed those games. Voters noticed them. Mike Krzyzewski never lost faith. But the role never expanded.
On March 22, 2020 — the same day Tre Jones declared for the NBA Draft — O'Connell entered the transfer portal. Two weeks later he committed to Creighton. "Can't wait to show what I'm truly capable of," he wrote. The frustration was clear in the phrasing. So was the resolve.
After Duke
Creighton was where O'Connell finally got the runway. He sat out the 2020-21 season as a transfer — the NCAA initially denied his immediate-eligibility waiver, then reversed itself in December 2020 to grant him eligibility, by which point he had already committed to redshirting and developing under Greg McDermott's pace-and-space system. He played 24 games as a redshirt junior, averaging 3.4 points in 9.7 minutes — still a reserve, still figuring out his place.
The 2021-22 season was the breakout that Duke had never given him room for. McDermott handed him the starting shooting guard job from day one. O'Connell started all 35 games. He averaged 11.8 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 2.3 assists per game. He earned BIG EAST All-Academic honors. He led Creighton to a 23-12 record and an NCAA Tournament bid. The 6-foot-6 wing from Roswell, who'd been a deep-bench piece at Duke for three years, finished his college career as the steady veteran on a Big East team. The shooting wasn't quite what it had been as a Duke freshman, but the role was finally his.
He went undrafted in the 2022 NBA Draft. Sacramento signed him to a training camp deal, waived him, and routed him to their G League affiliate in Stockton. He spent the 2022-23 season with the Stockton Kings, averaging 8.6 points across 32 appearances. He had a 21-point, 6-steal night against Iowa. He grabbed 11 rebounds against South Bay. The G League is where you go to prove you belong. He was proving it.
In 2023-24, he went to Italy. Reyer Venezia of the Lega Basket Serie A — one of the best leagues outside the NBA — gave him his first taste of European basketball. Venice is a city built on islands. He spent a season there.
The summer of 2024 brought the Knicks. New York signed him to an Exhibit-10 contract on October 2, 2024, brought him to training camp, waived him on October 9, and assigned his G League rights to the Westchester Knicks. He spent 2024-25 with Westchester, posting career highs in blocks and continuing to play winning basketball as a 25-year-old veteran of three professional levels. The 6-foot-6 frame held up. The shot kept coming back. The motor never quit.
On November 5, 2025, ALBA Berlin came calling. The German Bundesliga powerhouse had just lost their leading scorer Boogie Ellis, who had departed for Dubai after only six games. ALBA needed a shooter who could defend. Sporting director Himar Ojeda made the call. "Alex is a strong shooter and defender, very athletic and dangerous in fastbreak," Ojeda said. "He fits us perfectly with his skillset." O'Connell signed through the end of the season.
Where Is He Now
O'Connell is in his first season with ALBA Berlin of Germany's Basketball Bundesliga, signed November 5, 2025 through the end of the 2025-26 campaign. Through 14 games he is averaging 6.7 points, 2.9 rebounds, and 1.1 assists in 15.9 minutes per game, shooting 47.5% from the field and 22.6% from three for a Berlin team that has won eight straight in the Bundesliga and sits among the league leaders. Head coach Pedro Calles has been effusive: "He is very open and approachable. He always greets you with a smile. It's just fun to work with him, and I think he gets along very well with his teammates." When O'Connell visited Berlin's 368-meter Fernsehturm in November, he was already plotting team dinners up there. "From up here I can get a sense of how big the city is," he told the rbb. The kid from Roswell whose father wore Duke blue in the 1970s has now played pro basketball in three countries — and he's still shooting the ball, still earning starts, still showing what he's capable of.