LAKEWOOD, Calif. — It’s not every day notification comes you are being followed on Twitter by someone’s beard. This one came from James Harden’s Beard.

I immediately followed back.

Even in 140 characters or less, I learned more than I needed to know from his — its? — profile. But the first tweet was funny, announcing he — it? — was dressing up for Halloween as Jeremy Lin.

I don’t know about the beard. But Harden, the most intriguing Rockets acquisition since, oh, four months ago when they signed Lin, resembled Michael Jordan in Wednesday’s season opener, contributing 37 points and 12 assists to the team’s victory in Detroit.

Harden’s coaches at Lakewood Artesia High School in a southwest suburb of Los Angeles say they didn’t know when he arrived there as a freshman in 2003 that he was going to be a dominant player.

“It’s become a myth that I took a few looks at him and said he was going to be an NBA star,” said Scott Pera, Artesia’s head coach during Harden’s first three years at the school and now an assistant coach at Penn. “I said he was going to be a good high school player.”

Pera would not have predicted Harden, at 23, would become the youngest player to win the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year as the league’s most valuable reserve last season with Oklahoma City. Or that Harden would become a member of the 2012 Dream Team that won the gold medal for the United States in the Summer Olympics in London. Or that he would be a likely candidate for the All-Star Game scheduled for February at Toyota Center.

And Pera certainly couldn’t have foreseen Harden would become the most interesting man in the NBA.

High-profile pals

It all starts with the bushy black beard, which droops below his neck, almost covering the bow-ties he often wears along with colorful sport coats, argyle socks and neon tennis shoes. His look, his easygoing yet engaging personality and his game have attracted sponsors such as Nike, Foot Locker and Skull Candy along with millions of viewers internationally to his You Tube videos, particularly the one co-starring supermodel Kate Upton, as well as gossip.

Was he dating controversial and profane rapper Trina? It seemed so from her “FEATHERBEARD” hashtags on Twitter. Did they split because she stepped out with Lil Wayne? Did he forbid the Thunder from giving Lil Wayne courtside seats for a playoff game? Was the whole brouhaha the reason Harden didn’t play well in the Thunder’s losing effort in last season’s NBA Finals against the Miami Heat? (Could LeBron James have had something to do with that?)

Growing up in Compton

No matter what went down, Harden looked chilled out in photos later in the summer from his annual All-White dress party on Marina del Rey’s largest yacht, the FantaSea One, surrounded by 350 notables from the sports and entertainment worlds.

“I would have had to have been Nostradamus to see him in the middle of that world,” Pera said.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be so surprising considering Harden grew up in one of the most dynamic suburban clusters in Southern California, revolving around Compton. Dynamic is not an adjective often used for Compton, which has more of a reputation, though somewhat outdated because of more vigilant law enforcement, for gangs, crime and corruption than for the amazing talents it has produced.

That is not limited to athletes, such as Olympic long jumper Bob Beamon and the tennis-playing Williams sisters and the countless in mainstream sports. Compton also is the birthplace to the West Coast rap movement, the hometown of the founder of Death Row Records, Dr. Dre, N.W.A. and Ice Cube.

Harden took it all in, even though his mother wanted him out. Their home was in one of Compton’s emerging middle-class hubs, Rancho Dominguez, which, according to the Los Angeles Times’ “Mapping L.A.’’ website has a low rate of violent crime but the county’s highest property crime rate. People there have things that people in surrounding communities want.

Reluctant prep star

Monja Willis, Harden’s mother, preferred he attend school in a safer, more academically oriented environment.

She chose Artesia, on a quiet, well-manicured, eucalyptus-tree lined avenue in Lakewood, which adopted the slogan, “Times change, values don’t.”

Artesia’s well-regarded basketball program wasn’t a factor in Willis’ decision. Her son didn’t know anything about it until he walked into the gym and saw a photo on the wall of Jason Kapono, one of Harden’s favorite players at UCLA who later went on to play in the NBA.

As a freshman, Harden was a 6-1 set shooter who often had to take breaks because of asthma. Pera, however, was impressed with his instincts.

By the middle of his junior year, after Harden had grown several inches and developed a more well-rounded game, Pera was impressed. Period.

He asked Harden to take more command of the offense, something he had been reluctant to do because, according to Pera, he didn’t want to be considered a “ball hog.” Pera called Willis, who soon marched into his office with Harden.

“She told him to do whatever the coach told him to do or he’d have to answer to her,” Pera said.

From that day forward, Harden was recognized as one of Southern California’s best players, leading Artesia to two state championships and earning a scholarship to Arizona State. It was an easy choice because Pera had moved there to become an assistant coach after Harden’s junior year and his mother was moving to nearby Phoenix to take over a house her mother had willed to her.

‘I wasn’t a bad kid’

Willis had two other children, 10 and 14 years older than Harden, and raised him as a single mom. Her other son, Akili Roberson, played quarterback in the Arena Football League, telling people he learned to throw from playing catch with his mother in front of their house.

Harden’s father, James, was a Navy seaman but in and out of prison twice on drug and other charges. Tavo Marquez, Artesia’s athletic director, said the father attended some games after Harden flourished but James wouldn’t have anything to do with him, refusing to accept the “Jr.”

“What’s the point of me talking to you if you’re going to keep going in and out of jail?’’ Harden once asked his father.

Of his mother, he said this week, “She wasn’t strict. She let me grow. If I messed up or she felt I was on the wrong path, she would tell me. I wasn’t a bad kid growing up, so it was more helping me when I needed help.”

Others helped. Willis worked as an AT&T maintenance administrator for 25 years in Pasadena, an hour east depending on traffic, and needed to make arrangements for her son after school. Often, Pera would drop him close to home at a fast-food restaurant, where he would eat dinner while waiting for his mother.

As close as they were, Pera seldom saw the flamboyant side of Harden’s personality.

“My office was next to the locker room, so sometimes I would hear him joking around,” Pera said. “But as soon as I would walk in the door, he’d be quiet, respectful.”

Branding the beard

The head of the school’s physical education department, Gerry Ellis, said Harden hasn’t changed.

“To this day, he stands when I walk into the room, looks me in the eye and shakes my hand,” Ellis said.

Harden said he “really blossomed” in college.

“That’s just who I am now,” he said. “I love the kids. Media people. Smile and just enjoy life.”

Chronicle Rockets reporter Jonathan Feigen said in the short time he has known Harden he “doesn’t seem terribly attention seeking.”

James Harden’s Beard? That seeks attention.

It started with a small goatee he let grow in college, he said, because he was too lazy to shave every day. It soon became his brand — Fear the Beard — as well as his alter ego.

Before a Thunder game against the Lakers in Los Angeles last year, Frank Burlison, a college basketball expert from Long Beach who has known Harden since he was a ninth-grader, told him he should shave the beard.

“He just laughed,” Burlison said. “He said he couldn’t, that it was his ancillary income.’”

Don’t Fear the Beard.

Follow the Beard.

Chronicle staff writer Jonathan Feigen contributed to this column.

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