At six years old, Lee Melchionni interrupted a Duke basketball old-timers' game by running across the court toward the Blue Devil mascot. The detail appears in his 2005-06 GoDuke biography, dropped in among the standard prep-school accomplishments and the inevitable note about being a lifelong Duke fan, and it captures the case for his recruitment more efficiently than any scouting report could. Years before he had a jump shot, before he was a McDonald's All-American honorable mention, before he was the team captain at Germantown Academy in suburban Philadelphia, he was a small boy on a hardwood floor in Cameron Indoor Stadium running toward the team that was already his. As he told the Lancaster Sunday News in 2000, when he was a high school junior weighing offers from Duke, North Carolina, and Villanova: "If you cut me open, I think I'd bleed Duke blue."
He was born September 30, 1983, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the second of three children of Gary and Karen Melchionni. He grew up in nearby Manheim Township in Lancaster County, the only place the basketball-saturated Melchionni family had ever called home. His father, Gary Melchionni, had been one of the first members of his generation to leave the family's South Jersey basketball nursery for college elsewhere. Gary played at Duke from 1970 to 1973 under coach Bucky Waters, then under Neill McGeachy, becoming a two-time team captain as a junior and senior, an All-ACC performer, and the holder of the program's confidence at the point-guard spot. He was selected by the Phoenix Suns with the 33rd overall pick of the 1973 NBA Draft, played two seasons in the NBA from 1973 to 1975 (averaging 7.8 points per game), and after returning to Lancaster to practice law became one of the most engaged Duke alumni in the country — eventually serving as President of the Duke Alumni Association. He was the kind of Duke alumnus who took his family back to Cameron for old-timers' games. Lee went to Duke games at an age when most children are still learning the rules of the sport.
Gary was not the most famous basketball Melchionni. That distinction belongs to Lee's uncle, Bill Melchionni, who from Pennsauken Township, New Jersey, became a Villanova All-American, the 1966 NIT Most Valuable Player, and one of only four players in basketball history to win championships in both the NBA and the ABA. Bill was selected by the Philadelphia 76ers in the second round of the 1966 NBA Draft and won the 1967 NBA Championship as a rookie alongside Wilt Chamberlain. He moved to the upstart American Basketball Association in 1969, joined the New York Nets, led the ABA in assists per game three consecutive seasons (1971, 1972, 1973), made three ABA All-Star teams, won ABA championships in 1974 and 1976 alongside Julius Erving, and ended his career having played with two of the ten best players ever born. His No. 25 jersey was retired by both Villanova (1995) and the Nets. After retiring, Bill served as the Nets' general manager and was the man who, with the franchise drowning in the financial obligations of the ABA-NBA merger, made the wrenching call to sell Erving to the 76ers to keep the team solvent. Lee's uncles Bob and Tom Melchionni also played at Villanova. His cousin Keith Melchionni was a four-year lacrosse letterman at Duke.
Lee was the second-most-celebrated basketball Melchionni of his own generation while it was happening. His older sister Monica attended Duke as a student (she would later become a lawyer and is currently Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer at MetLife). His younger brother Dean would go on to walk on at the University of Texas under Rick Barnes, earn a scholarship, and play sixteen games over four years before going into sports broadcasting. The Melchionnis were a four-school basketball family — Duke, Villanova, Texas, and Williams (where another cousin Bill Melchionni played) — and Lee's commitment to following his father to Durham was, by his own account, never seriously contested.
He started at Manheim Township High School and transferred to Germantown Academy in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, for his junior year — for reasons, the Sportswriter Gordie Jones noted in 2022, "he doesn't wish to discuss." Germantown Academy in 2000-01 was a national-schedule prep program with a roster that finished No. 17 in the USA Today rankings under coach Jim Fenerty, and Melchionni flourished there. As a junior he averaged 16.0 points, a team-best 9.0 rebounds, 4.0 assists, and 4.0 steals per game while leading GA to a 27-3 record. As a senior in 2001-02 he was the team captain and averaged 19.7 points, 9.2 rebounds, 5.0 assists, and 3.0 steals, accumulating over 1,200 career points and 800 career rebounds, earning two-time all-state, three-time all-county, two-time all-city honors, and honorable mention McDonald's All-American recognition. He was the MVP of the 2002 Prime Time Shootout and a top-100 national recruit. He was also an excellent soccer player — 44 career goals as a freshman and sophomore at Germantown, two-time all-league. He chose to play basketball at the school where, sixteen years earlier, his father had been a captain. He committed to Duke and Mike Krzyzewski and entered the recruiting class of 2002, alongside Shavlik Randolph, Sean Dockery, Michael Thompson, and his future roommate, Shelden Williams.