Clippers’ DeAndre Jordan ‘has come a long way’ to become an NBA All-Star

The pendant hanging around Brett Jordan’s neck is shaped like the fraction, ¼.

It glittered as it rested on his shirt while he sat next to the other two-fourths, and looked down at the court where their final piece prepared for the NBA Slam Dunk contest.

DeAndre Jordan pointed up into the stands where his brothers and his mother sat, and they all beamed together at where the journey brought them.

They are rarely ever together, but there they were at Smoothie King Center, with each other for one last weekend before school and careers split them apart again.

Nine years into his career, the Clippers center is finally an All-Star.

“I think everything happens for a reason,” DeAndre said. “There’s years where I thought I would’ve made it before but I didn’t. I was fine with that. I was at peace with it. This being year nine, making it this year, it’s cool. I’m really fortunate.”

He took the moment to celebrate with his family.

Brett describes their childhood selves as “four bad boys” and DeAndre was either their tormentor (according to his brothers) or their victim (according to DeAndre). They had too much energy, according to their mother, and she spent her days as a single mother running around chasing after them in the Houston suburb of Pearland.

“My mom raised all four of us by herself,” DeAndre said. “We’ve seen a lot. For her to be able to go to one game, four different activities she had to be at sometimes. Just to see her do that and manage it so well with the other things going on was great. She’s definitely the backbone of our family.”

They fought constantly and made mischief often. Once they managed to stuff their cousin in a zip-up laundry hamper and slid him down the stairs. No one was injured, and DeAndre blamed his brothers. They say it was his fault.

As they grew older, sports dominated their lives. Cory, 26, became a baseball player while Brett, 24, and Avery, 22, settled on football. Basketball was a natural choice for the tallest member of their family.

DeAndre was 6 feet 1 by the time he was in eighth grade — one inch shorter than his mother, Kimberly Jordan-Williams.

“We were in church one Sunday and I’m looking down at his head, and the following Sunday I’m looking up at him,” she said. “And I had to look to see was he standing on something. That growth spurt was big.”

That was when he succeeded in his first dunk ever. Around then, his mother remembers him wandering around the house making imaginary phone calls to NBA Commissioner David Stern, discussing where he’d been drafted.

The dream was there, but the NBA seemed like only that back then — the kind of unattainable goal many children have. Jordan-Williams would go to his games for support, but never saw a great athlete in her oldest son. “Still very, very timid,” she said. “He’s come a long way.”

She told him once that while he was resting, others were working out and getting better. DeAndre began to internalize that lesson as he got into high school. In ninth and 10th grade his play began to blossom. As a senior, Rivals.com ranked him as the second best center in the country.

“Around that time he was in the ABCD camp,” Brett said. “He had this big buzz around Houston. I’m just thinking man he’s this good and he’s about to go to Texas A&M. If DeAndre’s playing the same way he is now in college, he could be one and done and then leave.”

That’s just what he did, but he fell to the Clippers in the second round, while his brothers were all still in high school or younger. The youngest, Avery, only started watching his brothers games once he became an NBA player. Before that, Avery simply went to the games and ran around playing his own games.

They happened to be together when they learned DeAndre was named an All- Star. Jordan-Williams was in the car with three of her sons and her mother, whom they’d just collected from the beauty shop.

“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed as she listened to the call inside a Cadillac Escalade, a car with enough space so the she and her kids, all of them taller than 6 feet, could be comfortable.

Fear set into the car. What if something bad happened? What on Earth could have caused that reaction? As their hearts pounded in anticipation, she waved them all off until the call finished.

In fact, it was something very, very good. It was time to cancel the trip to Hawaii and instead book one to New Orleans.

“We went crazy in the car,” Brett Jordan recalls.

After the long journey, they all felt the same joy he did. As they’ve grown up, their lives have spread them around the country. Brett just finished school Colorado State, where he played football. Avery is an offensive lineman at the University of New Mexico. Cory is about to move to Germany to play baseball.

They’ll still stay in touch on a text message group called “1/4.”

“It’s four of us and we’re hardly ever together at one time because we’re so spread out across the country,” DeAndre said. “One fourth is just — we’re a part of each other.”

tania.ganguli@latimes.com

Follow Tania Ganguli on Twitter @taniaganguli