Taylor Steven King was born on May 30, 1988, in Orange County, California — the youngest of four children. His father Steve King was a basketball-loving father who, by his own account in the family interviews that would eventually be conducted on the 5 Point Play Podcast, had become sober from alcoholism in 1981 and brought to his fatherhood a discipline-and-recovery sensibility that he applied first and foremost to his children's relationship with sports. From the time Taylor was two or three years old, his father gave him a basketball. By kindergarten he was on a club team. By fifth grade he was working with a personal trainer, with his father serving as his initial coach. The household was a basketball household first.
The family lived a block from the beach in Huntington Beach, California. The 2019 Mike Jensen feature in the Philadelphia Inquirer captured what was probably the most striking detail of King's childhood:
> "The King family lived a block from the beach, but Taylor never so much as glimpsed the shoreline. 'I never went,' he said."
By fourth and fifth grade he was training with peers who included Tyson Childress and Josh Childress — soon-to-be NBA players whose families lived nearby. By seventh and eighth grade he was training with pros and college players who aspired to enter the NBA. The trajectory was the kind that California prep basketball families in the early 2000s understood well: a Marinovich-style basketball-only adolescence in the country's strongest prep basketball region, aimed squarely at major Division I scholarship and the NBA pipeline.
He landed at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana — one of the most decorated athletic programs in the United States. Mater Dei alumni include NFL quarterbacks Matt Leinart and Matt Barkley, plus nine NBA players and roughly ten total NFL players. Under legendary head coach Gary McKnight, Mater Dei played a national prep schedule against the country's strongest high schools each season. King wore his Mater Dei uniform for four years and posted some of the most prolific scoring numbers in the program's history.
The Mater Dei career, line by line:
- Career points: 3,214 (4th-most in California high-school history, top-10 all-time as of 2024)
- 1,224 career rebounds (Mater Dei school record)
- 370 career three-pointers
- 2006 single-season rebound record at Mater Dei: 444
- 2007 single-season scoring record at Mater Dei: 987 points
- Senior year averages: 27 PPG, 11 RPG
- 2007 Mr. Basketball California
- 2007 Second-team Parade All-American
- 2007 McDonald's All-American (West squad — scored 8 points in the game)
- RSCI #27 nationally in the class of 2007
- Four-time ABCD Camp selection (2003-2006) — a frequency only the country's most-discussed prep prospects achieved
His college recruiting started early. In summer 2003, the summer after eighth grade, he announced his verbal commitment to UCLA — a then-record-young public commitment that the NCAA's later landscape would not repeat. The commitment lasted less than two years before opening to a national recruitment that included every major program. In February 2007, he committed to Duke University under head coach Mike Krzyzewski. He was 18, 6'6", 230 pounds, blessed with a left-handed shooter's stroke and the deep range that the modern game would soon make essential. He joined the recruiting class of 2007 — the same class that included Kyle Singler, Nolan Smith, and a freshman class that, three years later, would help win the program's only national championship of the entire between era.
His father Steve King rented an apartment in Durham when Taylor enrolled. The Marinovich-style proximity carried with him to college.