On Christmas Eve 1968, Andy Borman's grandfather orbited the Moon. Frank Borman, the West Point graduate-turned-Air Force colonel-turned-astronaut, was commanding Apollo 8 — the first crewed mission to leave Earth's orbit and circle another world — when he and crewmates Jim Lovell and William Anders took turns reading from the Book of Genesis on what was at the time the most-watched television broadcast in human history. "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth." The Earthrise photograph was taken on that mission. The Apollo program's first lunar transit. The Congressional Space Medal of Honor. Frank Borman was a quintessential Cold Warrior, a no-nonsense engineer who told historians he flew Apollo 8 because "space was the ultimate battlefield" and the goal was beating the Soviets. He retired from NASA in 1970, became chairman of Eastern Air Lines, and lived to be 95 years old.
His grandson Andy was born into that legacy in suburban Morrisville, North Carolina — but it wasn't Andy's only inheritance. Andy's mother is the sister of Mickie Krzyzewski, which means Andy is Coach K's nephew. Two of the most famous American families converged in one kid: an astronaut on his father's side, a Hall of Fame basketball coach on his mother's. The historical overlap was that Coach K — West Point class of 1969 — had attended the academy in years when Frank Borman was still on faculty there teaching thermodynamics and fluid mechanics, and the two men knew each other independently long before their families intertwined.
Andy grew up in the Triangle, which meant growing up around Duke basketball. His uncle was building a dynasty fifteen minutes from his house. He was at Cameron Indoor Stadium for games while still in elementary school. He played both basketball and soccer through high school, but soccer was where he was actually elite — a top recruit for the Duke men's soccer program out of IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, where he'd spent his prep years. He came to Duke on a soccer commitment, not a basketball one.
What happened next is the only known origin story in Brotherhood history that begins with a phone call from the head coach to the player's mom's sister's son. "During the summer before his freshman year, Borman received a phone call from his uncle," the Greensboro News & Record later reported. "Coach K said that if I was able to juggle my soccer and academic schedules without much difficulty, he'd like me to try out for basketball when the soccer season ended." Andy jumped at it. He'd be a soccer starter and a basketball walk-on. The grandson of an astronaut, the nephew of the coach, dressing for fall soccer matches and winter basketball practices on the same Duke campus.