Nick Horvath was born on February 18, 1981 in Shoreview, Minnesota — the suburban St. Paul community on the Mississippi River corridor between Minneapolis and the Wisconsin border. The household was a science household. His father was a chemist with a serious love of physics theory; his mother stressed the importance of education. Neither parent was an athlete. The only thing they stressed as he was growing up was the importance of education. As Nick would later tell Physics World magazine in a long-form interview, "I never planned on physics as a career simply because I did not enjoy working in a lab. I have found that I like physics theory much more than the grind of true physics work."
The basketball entered his life by accident. "That's an easy one: I was tall," he told Physics World. "I had zero interest in sport at a young age and was pushed into basketball against my will when I was about eight. I hated it. The next year, however, I was so much taller than everyone else that in my first game, even though I had no idea what I was doing, I could simply hold the ball above my head and shoot over everyone. I fell in love with basketball after that first game. If I had played badly that day, it is likely that I would not have played again in my entire life."
The physics had a parallel arrival, also through his father:
> "My father was a chemist and science-lover, and while I was in high school, he and I read a whole pile of physics books by the likes of Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, Paul Davies and Timothy Ferris. My favourite was 'In Search of Schrödinger's Cat' by John Gribbin; I have great memories of walking the trails through the woods near my house reading that book and talking about the marvels of physics with my father."
He attended Mounds View High School in Arden Hills, Minnesota, the suburban St. Paul public high school whose Mustangs basketball program was, in the late 1990s, building toward the deepest run in the program's history. As a junior in 1998, Nick led Mounds View to its first state tournament appearance. As a senior in 1999, he led Mounds View to a second consecutive state tournament — and won the 1999 Minnesota Class AA State Championship. He was named 1999 Minnesota Mr. Basketball — the highest individual honor a Minnesota high-school basketball player can earn.
The same summer between his junior and senior years, he had been part of the United States gold-medal-winning U18 team at the 1998 World Youth Games in Moscow. He was Team USA's seventh-leading scorer (7.2 points per game) and fourth-leading rebounder (5.7 rebounds per game) at the international tournament — his first significant USA Basketball credential, and the first international-level competition that would, twelve years later, anticipate his eventual decision to represent New Zealand on the international stage.
The college recruiting trail produced multiple high-profile scholarship offers. He chose Duke. He arrived in Durham in fall 1999 as a 6'10", 250-pound forward with the kind of academic ambition — and the kind of family-instilled love of physics theory and English literature — that the Krzyzewski program had specifically built itself around recruiting. He took jersey No. 3. He was, on day one of his freshman season, a Mr. Basketball-type prospect with a five-year college plan, a redshirt year already in his future, and a double-major in English and Physics already in his head.