By SAM LANCE
INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana — Ball is life is a common basketball saying, but for class of 2026 five-star Kaden House, it’s a reality.
House — the 6-foot-3, 160-pound combo guard from Arizona Compass Prep and the Arizona Unity Nike EYBL AAU program — has deep family ties in basketball. He’s been surrounded by basketball his entire life.
His father, Eddie House, is a former 11-year NBA veteran and 2008 NBA champion with the Boston Celtics. Eddie is also the all-time leading scorer at Arizona State University. His older brother, Jaelen House, just wrapped up his five-year college career including three seasons at New Mexico and recently received an invite the the G League Elite Camp.
And it doesn’t stop there. Kaden’s twin brother, 2026 shooting guard Kalek House, plays on the Arizona Unity as well and is receiving high-major interest. Then, you have Kaden’s cousin, Daniel House Jr., who has seven years of NBA experience and Kaden’s uncle, NBA legend Mike Bibby.
Growing up in a family like this can make for quite the competition amongst one another. And Kaden admitted sometimes things can get heated. For example, Kaden and his two brothers like to play a shooting game where you claim “spots” for making a certain amount of attempts. One time, Kaden got off to a great start, but it didn’t end so well.
“I won one spot, and I was talking crazy,” Kaden recalled. “After that, [Jaelen] won the rest of the spots. We went for like an hour long and he won the rest of the spots. Once he like hears us talking and going crazy, then he really turns it on.”
Kaden mentioned that growing up, Jaelen was always quicker, faster, stronger. He’d consistently lock he and his twin brother up on defense, stealing the ball from them at ease. But that was when they were younger. Now?
“We’ve at least started to score on him a little bit,” Kaden said. “It’s getting there.”
The defensive prowess and intensity that Jaelen brings is something that Kaden wants to mirror. Kaden mentioned that’s probably the biggest thing he’s learned from his older brother.
“It’s really just playing hard,” Kaden said. “It’s just effort. And mainly defense because if [Jaelen] comes to one of our games, he won’t really talk to you about how much you scored, but how you played on defense… I really just try to focus on playing hard because your shots not always going to fall, so you have to fall back on something. I think I fall back on defense and playing hard, getting every rebound.”
Kaden holds offers from the likes of Michigan, Arizona State, Washington State, Grand Canyon, Hampton and New Mexico State. He’s ranked the No. 22 player in the class of 2026 by 247Sports, giving him five-star status. His favorite NBA player is LeBron James.
Outside of basketball, Kaden used to enjoy playing video games. But nowadays, it’s all about the grind.
“To be honest, I stopped playing video games,” Kaden said. “I’m just in the gym right after school. I either lift and then shoot or I’ll just shoot right after. I just stopped playing video games, you know, after Fortnite started dying down and 2k got bad. I just started hooping all day instead of playing the game.”
The Arizona Unity begin a three-day weekend stretch Friday against Mac Irvin Fire at 7:00 p.m. ET. Kaden is playing up a year with the 17u team.
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