If you're tracing American basketball families with serious institutional weight at Duke, the Pagliucas are near the top of the list. Nick Edward Pagliuca was born June 15, 1994 in Newton, Massachusetts, into a family whose Duke connections were already three generations deep and would only deepen by the time he showed up in Durham nineteen years later.
His father is Stephen Pagliuca — Class of 1977, freshman basketball player turned private equity titan, former co-chair of Bain Capital (the global investment firm that today manages roughly $180 billion in assets, where Stephen now serves as Senior Advisor), former co-owner and managing general partner of the Boston Celtics through the franchise's championship era, and the principal owner and co-chairman of Atalanta B.C., the Italian Serie A football club that won the Europa League in May 2024 — the club's first major trophy in more than 60 years. Stephen has served on Duke's Board of Trustees since 2013 and previously chaired Duke's Trinity Board of Investors (2005-2007). His own Duke basketball career was, as he later put it on the record: "I was the worst player on one of the worst Duke teams of the last 50 years. I think we were 13-13 or something like that." Self-deprecation aside, the elder Pagliuca's institutional Duke ties give the family name an unusual weight in Cameron Indoor Stadium.
Nick's mother Judy Pagliuca is a biotech investor. His older brother Joe Pagliuca was himself a Duke walk-on from 2003 to 2007, wore jersey No. 45, and played in 13 career games — going to a Final Four during his time on the program. Older sister Stephanie graduated from Duke in 2013. Younger brother Jesse "broke the mold," as Nick put it, by playing at Amherst. The Pagliuca-to-Duke pipeline was direct: Stephen '77, Joe '07, Stephanie '13, Nick '17. As Nick told The Boston Globe: "We've always been a Duke family."
Nick attended Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts — one of the elite New England prep schools — where he became a four-year letterwinner and a National Merit Scholar. As a junior he averaged 16.0 points, 7.0 rebounds, and 3.0 assists. As a senior he averaged 20.3 points and 8.5 rebounds, leading Milton to its first-ever Independent School League championship. He earned All-ISL honors, Boston Globe ISL All-Star recognition, and honorable mention All-NEPSAC Class A accolades.
He had college options. He chose Duke. The reason he gave Boston Globe writer Marvin Pave was simple, and entirely consistent with what every other Pagliuca had said about the school for forty years: "My brother Joe, who is 10 years older than me, went to Duke as a walk-on too... It was a dream of mine to follow Joe to Duke. He mentioned that it would be a lot of work academically, but worth it in the end... We've always been a Duke family."
Nick arrived in Durham in fall 2013, took the same jersey number Joe had worn — No. 45 — and joined Coach K's program as a walk-on. There was one bit of pre-college basketball training that gave Nick a small advantage over the average walk-on, and it came courtesy of his father's other professional life. Kevin Garnett — then in the middle of his Boston Celtics career, having won the 2008 NBA championship with the team Stephen Pagliuca co-owned — had spent time working with Nick on his game during the offseasons. Nick has consistently credited Garnett with improvements to his pre-Duke skill set. Most walk-ons did not have a future Hall of Famer doing summer tune-ups with them. Nick did. The introduction came, of course, through Dad.