Arthur Edward Engelland III was born May 9, 1961, in Chicago, and raised in Pacific Palisades, California — a coastal neighborhood tucked between Malibu and Santa Monica, where the basketball courts are outdoors and the sun never seems to quit. His family called him Chip.
In seventh grade, Chip was shooting on an outdoor basketball court when a high school tennis coach walked over. The coach told the boy to keep his elbow in, his wrist bent, and take nothing but shots from five and six feet out. You learn the game like golf, the coach said — from the cup back. The advice stuck. It would define his life. Five years later, Engelland passed along the same advice to another gangly kid shooting baskets on the same outdoor court. That kid’s name was Steve Kerr. Kerr went on to shoot 45.4 percent from three for his career, win five NBA championships, and coach the Golden State Warriors dynasty. Engelland taught him to shoot on a blacktop in Pacific Palisades when they were teenagers.
In 1975, when Chip was fourteen, he served as a ball boy for John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins — Wooden’s final championship team, the last of ten national titles. A kid from Palisades fetching towels and rebounding for legends. In high school, he dated Jeannie Buss, who would grow up to become the president and co-owner of the Los Angeles Lakers. Basketball, in Chip Engelland’s world, was never far from greatness.
At Pacific Palisades High School, Engelland led the city of Los Angeles in scoring as a senior in 1979 — roughly 30 points per game. He earned a scholarship to Duke, arriving in Durham for the 1979–80 season under head coach Bill Foster. One year later, Foster left and a young coach from West Point named Mike Krzyzewski took over. Engelland played for both — the last coach of the old Duke and the first coach of the new one. He was there for the transition that changed everything.