Cameron Elijah Reddish was born on September 1, 1999, in Norristown, Pennsylvania, a working-class suburb northwest of Philadelphia. His father, Robert Reddish, played college basketball at Virginia Commonwealth University. His mother, Zanthia, raised Cam and his younger brother Aaron in a household where basketball was the heartbeat. Robert knew his son would play in the NBA when Cam was four years old, doing things with a basketball that eight-year-olds couldn’t do.
Cam played varsity basketball as an eighth-grader and freshman at the Haverford School on Philadelphia’s Main Line, then transferred to Westtown School in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Westtown was a 600-acre Quaker boarding school with rigorous academics and a basketball coach named Seth Berger — the founder of And1, the iconic streetball shoe and apparel company. Robert Reddish knew Berger because he had coached Berger’s son T.J. in AAU. At Westtown, Cam teamed with two other future NBA players: 6’11 center Mohamed Bamba and 6’6 shooting guard Brandon Randolph. Together they won back-to-back Friends’ School League championships and Pennsylvania Independent Schools state titles.
By his senior year, Reddish averaged 22.6 points and 5.6 rebounds per game, was named Mr. Pennsylvania Basketball, and was selected for the McDonald’s All-American Game, the Jordan Brand Classic, and the Nike Hoop Summit. On the Nike EYBL circuit the previous summer, he had averaged 23.8 points, 7.6 rebounds, and 3.1 assists for Team Final. Kevin Durant, watching Reddish’s highlights on his YouTube channel, said simply: I like this kid, man. He’s going to be a star.
Reddish was the third-ranked recruit in the Class of 2018 by both ESPN and 247Sports. He chose Duke over Connecticut, Kentucky, Villanova, and UCLA. I knew from the jump I wanted to go there, he said. His mother, Zanthia, described the process: We visited all the schools together. We had countless conversations. Lots of prayer. When he decided it was Duke, we said Duke it is. At Duke, he would join fellow top-three recruits RJ Barrett and Zion Williamson to form the most hyped freshman class in college basketball history.