Road to Duke
Every twin story has two sides, and in the Boozer family, the sides could not be more different. Cameron is stoic and serious. Cayden is loud and rambunctious. Their mother CeCe put it plainly: without Cayden, Cameron would have never gone to movies or done regular kid things. Cameron is the introvert with a basketball and a plan. Cayden is the extrovert who makes sure his brother — and everyone around him — actually lives.
Cayden Boozer was born July 18, 2007, in Salt Lake City, three weeks before he and Cameron performed the most important assist of their lives. Stem cells from their umbilical cords were transplanted into their older brother Carmani, who had sickle cell disease. The transplant worked. Carmani was cured. The story of how Cameron and Cayden were conceived through IVF — 34 eggs, 10 viable embryos, only 2 that were both sickle-cell-free and perfect bone marrow matches — is told in full in Cameron’s profile and in their father Carlos’s. It is the foundational story of the Boozer family. Cayden carries it with the knowledge that his life began as an act of love designed to save someone else’s.
CeCe described the family mantra as ‘I am my brother’s keeper.’ That phrase defines Cayden more than any stat line. He is the keeper. The one who watches out. The one who sees the floor — on the court and off it. Even as children, Cayden was the social one who dragged Cameron to birthday parties and movies. Cameron, left to his own devices, would have spent every waking hour in the gym. Cayden made sure his brother had a childhood alongside the basketball.
The twins grew up in Miami after Carlos’s NBA career wound down. CeCe and Carlos divorced in 2015 but both remained present. The boys wore Bulls jerseys to Heat playoff games as children, chanting ‘Let’s go Heat!’ At Columbus High School, Cameron was the scorer. Cayden was the conductor. At 6-5 and 210 pounds, Cayden had the size of a small forward but the vision of a floor general. He knew where Cameron wanted the ball before Cameron did — because they’d been playing together since before they could form sentences.
Junior year at Columbus: 12.0 PPG, 7.6 APG, 2.7 RPG, 1.8 SPG. Scouts called him the best passer in high school basketball. Assist-to-turnover ratio consistently better than 3:1. Nike EYBL: 6.5 APG leading the league. Peach Jam: 6.9 APG, including 11 in a semifinal. FIBA U17 World Cup: led the tournament in assists (6.4 APG) despite averaging just 18 minutes. He could score — 22 against Montverde, 22 against Link Academy — but he chose to pass.
ESPN compared him to Tre Jones. Others saw Andre Miller. The common thread: reliability. Cayden Boozer is the point guard who never panics, never forces, never turns it over when it matters. CeCe called him ‘trustworthy.’ For a point guard, there is no higher compliment. Committed to Duke October 11, 2024, alongside Cameron. Duke’s first five-star point guard since Jeremy Roach in 2020.
At Duke
The preseason scouting report on Cayden Boozer was simple: he makes everyone around him better, he doesn't need shots to impact the game, and the only question is whether he can score enough at the ACC level to keep defenses honest. By March, the scouting report needed updating.
Cayden came off the bench in Duke's first ten games, backing up junior Caleb Foster at point guard. He was efficient from the start — 14 points and five assists against Western Carolina, a game-high eight dimes at Army West Point, a personal 7-0 run in the second half of the Kansas game that kept the Champions Classic win from slipping away. But those were cameos. The starring role was waiting.
He earned his first career start on New Year's Eve against Georgia Tech: 13 points, five rebounds, three assists, three steals. By mid-January he was splitting minutes evenly with Foster, and the two-point-guard lineups were giving opponents fits — Cayden's ability to push tempo alongside Foster's halfcourt command created an offense that could play at any speed. Against SMU he played a career-high 34 minutes and logged 12 points with four assists. Against Clemson on Valentine's Day he went 5-for-7 from the field. In the final eight regular-season games, he had at least three assists in seven of them.
The numbers — 7.7 points, 3.0 assists, 50.0% shooting — told one story. The twin connection told another. Cayden and Cameron ran pick-and-roll actions that looked like telepathy. Cayden would come off a screen, freeze the defense with his eyes, and thread a pass to Cameron in the paint before the help could rotate. It was the same architecture that had produced four state titles at Columbus High — the passer and the scorer, the loud twin and the quiet twin, the conductor and the orchestra.
Then Foster broke his foot in the ACC Tournament. Suddenly Cayden wasn't the backup. He was the starter, and Duke's season was in his hands. He responded with the best stretch of his freshman year. In the ACC Championship against Virginia — 16 points. In the NCAA Tournament first round against Siena, when Duke trailed a 16-seed late in the second half, Cayden's composure at the point steadied a rattled team through an 11-0 run. Against TCU in the Round of 32 — nine points, five assists in 37 minutes as the primary ball-handler. Against St. John's in the Sweet 16 — steady again, running the offense while Cameron erupted for 22 and 10.
And then came UConn.
Cayden Boozer played one of the best games of his freshman year in the Elite Eight. He scored 15 points on 4-of-5 shooting — including a three-pointer. He went 6-for-6 from the free-throw line. He had six assists, five rebounds, and two steals. In the first half, with Duke building a 19-point lead, Cayden and Cameron combined for 29 points. The Boozers were doing what Boozers do: Cayden delivered, Cameron finished.
With six seconds left and Duke up 72-70, Cameron Boozer caught an inbound pass near midcourt. He passed it to Cayden. All Cayden had to do was hold it and take the foul. Instead, he saw Isaiah Evans and Patrick Ngongba ahead of him — Evans, Duke's best free-throw shooter at 86% — and tried to get them the ball. The pass was deflected by Silas Demary Jr. UConn recovered. Braylon Mullins launched a 35-footer from the logo. Nothing but net. UConn 73, Duke 72.
When Duke's locker room opened forty-five minutes later, most of the crying was already over. Cayden sat against the back wall, tear-streaked cheeks, blood-stained jersey. No one could tell where the blood had come from. 'I saw two people down there — Isaiah and Pat,' he told reporters. 'Just tried to get them the ball because Isaiah's our best free-throw shooter. I let our team down.'
A reporter from Newsweek asked him to reflect on his freshman season alongside Cameron. He called it 'a special year.' He said it was the final year he and his brother would have control over being able to play together, and he was 'never going to pass that up.' Then he shook his head. 'I just feel like I let him down.'
Later, a video surfaced of Cayden in the hallway, still in uniform: 'I feel like I cost our team our season.'
He didn't. Duke's three losses came by a combined five points. Two ended on buzzer-beaters. The Blue Devils were the first #1 seed in NCAA Tournament history to lose after leading by 15 or more at halftime — they were 134-0 in that situation before UConn. The second-half collapse was a team failure: eight turnovers turned into 16 UConn points, with Cameron losing the ball twice in the final three minutes and Foster losing it twice in a five-possession stretch. But Cayden, the keeper of his brothers, took it all on himself. Because that's what he does. He has been carrying other people's weight since the day he was born.
Final line for the season: 38 games, 7.7 points, 3.0 assists, 2.3 rebounds, 50.0% from the field, 81.3% from the line. He started 11 games — all 11 coming after Foster's injury — and averaged 10.8 points and 4.2 assists as a starter. The Duke Chronicle had compared him preseason to T.J. McConnell: a player whose impact is measured by his ability to make his teammates' lives easier. That turned out to be exactly right. Except McConnell never had to carry the weight of a season-ending turnover at 18 years old.
After Duke
Cayden is projected as a first-round pick in the 2026 draft alongside Cameron. He may not be drafted as high — point guards who pass first are historically undervalued compared to dominant scorers — but his impact could be equally profound. Teams that value winning over individual statistics will see what Columbus and Duke have seen: Cayden Boozer makes every team he’s on better.
The question every Boozer fan asks is whether the twins will end up on the same NBA team. The odds are long, but the possibility is tantalizing: two brothers, conceived through IVF to save their sibling, playing professional basketball together the way they have since elementary school.
Where Is He Now
The hallway outside Duke's locker room at Capital One Arena was quiet by 8:45 on a Sunday night in March. The assistant coaches whispered to each other, waiting for the bus to be packed. Upstairs, Dan Hurley was dancing to 'All I Do Is Win.' Down here, it was a funeral for the championship team that never was.
Against the wall, tucked into a cubicle, someone was crying quietly.
Cayden Boozer is 18 years old. He is a freshman point guard at Duke University who just finished one of the most remarkable seasons in the history of the program — 35-3, ACC regular-season and tournament champions, #1 overall seed, consensus National Player of the Year on his team, 70 wins in two years. He played the best game of his life in the Elite Eight: 15 points on 80% shooting, six assists, five rebounds, two steals. And he will replay the last six seconds for the rest of his life.
His twin brother Cameron — the one Cayden was born to protect, the one whose sickle-cell-free stem cells they share, the one he dragged to movies and birthday parties when Cameron would have just stayed in the gym — is projected as a top-three pick in the 2026 NBA Draft. Whether Cameron returns to Duke or enters the draft will likely determine whether Cayden does the same. They have never played on separate teams. They have never lived apart. The decision ahead is not just about basketball.
Carmani, the oldest brother — cured of sickle cell by the twins' stem cells at three weeks old — is 19, a freshman pitcher at the University of Fort Lauderdale. Carlos works as an ACC Network analyst and was in the building at Capital One Arena when Mullins's shot went in. CeCe remains deeply involved.
Cayden said after the UConn game that this was 'the final year he and his brother would have control over being able to play together' and he was 'never going to pass that up.' Read that sentence again. He didn't say it was the last year. He said it was the last year they'd have control. The NBA doesn't let twins pick the same team. The draft doesn't care about architecture.
I am my brother's keeper. That is the Boozer family mantra. Cayden has lived it since birth — literally, medically, biologically. He lived it on the court for 38 games, delivering the ball to Cameron 157 times this season in ways that turned into points. And he lived it in the worst moment of his young life, sitting against a locker room wall with a blood-stained jersey and tear-streaked cheeks, saying 'I let him down' when every stat on the box score said otherwise.
He didn't let anyone down. He's the connector. He's the loud twin who makes the quiet twin whole. He just tried to make one more pass.