DJ Steward went 10-for-10 from the field in a state championship game as a high school freshman. Not 10-for-15. Not a strong shooting night. Perfect — every shot he took went in, in the biggest game of the season, at Fenwick High School in Oak Park, Illinois. His team lost anyway. But the performance announced something to the Chicago basketball world: this kid was different.
Born on October 2, 2001, in Chicago, Steward grew up in Oak Park with basketball in his blood and music in his name. His father, Danny Boy Steward, was a recording artist on Death Row Records — Suge Knight's legendary label — in the 1990s. His stepfather, Tyrone Hill, played 12 seasons in the NBA. DJ was named after his father, but he chose his stepfather's profession.
After two years at Fenwick, Steward transferred to Whitney Young High School on Chicago's West Side — the same school that had produced Jahlil Okafor, who won a national championship at Duke in 2015. The pipeline was already built. At Whitney Young, Steward averaged 22.5 points, 4.1 rebounds, and 3.5 assists as a senior and was named a McDonald's All-American. On the Nike EYBL circuit the summer before, he had averaged 24.1 points while shooting 41% from three. In the Highland Shootout, he dropped 40 points including the game-tying bucket in a two-point win.
When Coach K and three assistant coaches — including Jon Scheyer — showed up at Whitney Young's first open gym of the fall, the recruitment was effectively over. Steward committed to Duke on September 18, 2019, becoming the biggest Chicago basketball recruit since Jalen Brunson left Stevenson for Villanova in 2015. NBC Sports Chicago called him "Chicago's biggest high school star since Jalen Brunson." He chose Duke over Illinois, Louisville, North Carolina, and Texas. The 247Sports scouting report compared him to Reggie Jackson: "A bit of an undersized scoring guard who can really shoot it." He was ranked the #1 player in Illinois and #23 nationally — and he arrived in Durham carrying the weight of a city that hadn't sent a player to Duke since Okafor five years earlier.