S EAGOVILLE — This child should be making noise. That was Georgia Aldridge’s first thought.

It was moments after she had given birth to her second son. She was lying exhausted in a Dallas hospital bed, listening for a telltale sign of new life.

Instead, she heard nothing.

“I assumed he wasn’t alive,” Georgia said.

At some point during the delivery, the umbilical cord had wrapped around the newborn’s neck. Georgia Aldridge’s baby boy was suffocating.

In a matter of moments that felt to her like an eternity, doctors scrambled to save the child. Finally, Georgia heard a cry. LaMarcus Nurae Aldridge was born.

In those terrifying first minutes of her son’s life, on July 19, 1985, Georgia Aldridge believes she learned something crucial about him.

“LaMarcus came into this world a fighter,” she said.

When the nurses at last handed Georgia Aldridge her son — 11 pounds, 1 ounce of now-squalling newborn so heavy she could barely hold him — there didn’t seem to be any point in denying it.

More Information LaMarcus Aldridge Height/weight: 6-11, 240 Age:30 Contract:4 years, $84 million High school: Seagoville Family: 2 sons, Jaylen (6) and LaMarcus Jr. (5) College: Texas. In two seasons averaged 13.5 points, 8.2 rebounds, 1.3 steals, 1.8 blocks in 53 games from 2004-06. Pro highlights: Drafted No. 2 overall by Chicago in 2006 then traded by Bulls to Portland for rights to No. 4 pick (Tyrus Thomas) and future second-rounder. Free agent signee by Spurs, July 2015. 9 seasons with Portland. 648 games, 19.4 scoring average (48.5 FG%), 8.4 rebounds, 1.9 assists, 1.0 blocks. 4-time All Star (2012-15) In 2014-15 season, scored 23.4 points per game, 21.8 in postseason, 18 in All-Star Game. Career-highs: Points (44 vs. Denver on Jan. 23, 2014; Rebounds (25 vs. Houston on Dec. 12, 2013), Assists (8 vs. Atlanta on Nov. 12, 2012; Steals (5 vs. Spurs on Dec. 19. 2014). Personal:Missed month of April in 2006-07 season dealing with dizziness and erratic heartbeat, later attributed to Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome. Additional heart-related procedure before 2011-12 season.

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“I knew he was going to be something great,” she said.

The 6-foot-11 cornerstone of the Spurs’ headline-stealing offseason, Aldridge has long since made good on his mother’s intuition.

Aldridge made five All-Star appearances in nine seasons in Portland, emerging as one of the league’s most lethal scoring big men.

His decision to join the five-time champion Spurs this summer, on a four-year contract worth $84 million, was the kind of jaw-dropping transaction that could alter the Western Conference landscape for seasons to come.

Those closest to the 30-year-old Aldridge — who was raised in the Dallas suburb of Seagoville, played two college seasons at Texas and now has two young sons of his own growing up in the state — saw his choice for what it was: a chance, at last, to come home.

“I’ve been able to see my family more now,” said Aldridge, who opens his Spurs career Wednesday at Oklahoma City. “I’ve been able to go to my kids’ soccer games. I’ve been able to be around more than I have in the past. It’s been a good change.”

As Aldridge’s story can attest, however, home can be a complicated place.

A father figure

Aldridge was 16 years old when Georgia divorced his father, Marvin, who had a drinking problem.

The man who would one day become Aldridge’s surrogate father figure first had to beg his way into Aldridge’s life.

Robert Allen, the varsity basketball coach at Seagoville High School, had watched from afar as Aldridge sprouted into a 6-foot-7 eighth grader.

When Allen heard a rumor Georgia was considering sending the budding phenom to another high school to start his freshman year, he beat a path to her door to find out why.

The day was sweltering. Georgia remembers that. For nearly two hours on the front porch of the family’s modest trailer home, Aldridge’s mother made Allen sweat — both literally and figuratively.

“He was giving me all the reasons LaMarcus should go to Seagoville,” Georgia said. “I was thinking of every reason why he shouldn’t.”

Georgia told Allen about a coach at the middle school who had ripped into Aldridge using curse words. She wanted to know if he could expect the same treatment at the high school.

Allen assured Aldridge’s mother he would look after him. She relented.

Once back at the high school, Allen gathered his staff of assistants.

“I told them, ‘If you ever use profanity toward one of these kids, I’ll fire you on the spot,’” Allen said.

A tough-love disciplinarian in his own right, Allen needed no expletives to get through to Aldridge.

He had other ways.

The summer before Aldridge began his freshman year, Allen invited him to an open gym to scrimmage with varsity players.

Before Aldridge arrived, Allen talked him up to the older kids as the next big thing in Seagoville.

Aldridge showed up wearing jeans and street shoes, and didn’t impress. When one of the varsity players began talking trash, Aldridge promised a rematch.

“LaMarcus came back the next day,” Allen said, “and he beat the living daylights out of that kid.”

Allen had coached future NBA star Chris Bosh as a freshman at rival Dallas Lincoln a few years before.

He believed Aldridge could be a similar player, if only someone would push him.

“I knew if we could just get that fire out of him, he would be something special,” Allen said.

So Allen went to work starting a fire.

In a story that has been retold so often around Seagoville that it has become part of the town’s folklore, Allen stopped Aldridge’s first workout with the varsity team because he thought his freshman star wasn’t working hard enough.

The penance for Aldridge was an 8.8-mile run on the track.

“I thought he might be angry, and never come back,” Allen said. “Instead, he was waiting for me in the gym first thing the next morning.”

Building a star

For the next four years, Aldridge practically lived in the Seagoville High gym, keeping a custodian with a key on call so he could get in and shoot at odd hours.

“He had a job at a shoe store, and he’d get off at 10 or 11 at night,” said Damon Barnett, an assistant at Seagoville during Aldridge’s senior season. “He’d be up at the gym working out.”

It was there, in the isolation of the Seagoville gym, that Aldridge first honed the silky jump shot that would one day make him millions.

At lunch on school days, Aldridge would hole up in Allen’s office and break down game tape.

When University of Texas coach Rick Barnes visited Seagoville for the first time to recruit Aldridge, he noticed a mini refrigerator in Allen’s office filled with snacks and drinks.

“They told me it was there for everybody,” Barnes said, “but it was really for LaMarcus.”

Measuring up

At first, Aldridge’s coaches at Seagoville weren’t sure what they had in him.

“You didn’t really look at the kid and think he was going to be a pro one day,” said Charles Brooks, the junior varsity coach at the time. “We thought he would be a pretty good high school player.”

Aldridge’s trajectory changed midway through his freshman season when he met up with a Lincoln team that had Bosh as its showpiece.

Two years older than Aldridge, and already regarded as the top high school player in the state, Bosh had heard tales of the new kid at Seagoville.

“He was this tall, really skinny guy,” said Bosh, now a nine-time All-Star with the Miami Heat. “Everybody was talking about him, that he was going to be the next big guy.”

In Bosh, Aldridge saw his own personal measuring stick.

“He was kind of the big man you had to go through to prove you were real,” Aldridge said. “Once I played well versus him, it opened up everyone else’s eyes around me: ‘Oh, this kid might be real.’”

Aldridge scored 27 points in that first meeting, although Bosh also played well and Lincoln won the game.

When the two rising stars met again the following season, the rematch played to a packed house.

Fans and classmates weren’t the only ones taking notice. College recruiters began to come around. Agents and AAU coaches, their intentions dubious, began to circle in droves. Allen played the role of gatekeeper, fending off anyone who might not have Aldridge’s best interests at heart.

Looking back, Aldridge describes Allen’s effect on his life in one word: “Invaluable.”

“For me, he wore a lot of hats,” Aldridge said. “He was a father figure, he was a coach, he was a mentor, a motivator. He was the first one to believe in me. He was instrumental in my growth as a player and as a man.”

Aldridge’s mother, meanwhile, made sure her son’s priorities stayed true even as he chased basketball stardom.

Academics came first. Always. Georgia’s house rule for LaMarcus and his older brother LaVontae was clear-cut: bring home any grade below a B, and there will be no more basketball.

It only happened once, when Aldridge made a C in an Advanced Placement math class.

Terrified, Aldridge pleaded with Allen to break the news to his mother and explain it was a college-level course.

Georgia was only partially swayed.

“I let him play,” she said. “But he was still grounded.”

Friend or foe?

Aldridge’s senior yearbook at Seagoville shows he was voted “most popular.” Not everybody on campus, however, seemed to deal well with Aldridge’s blossoming celebrity.

Once, a shrine of photos and press clippings on a teacher’s bulletin board devoted to Aldridge was mysteriously defaced. Security footage proved the culprit to be a classmate Aldridge considered a friend.

Then there is the story of Aldridge’s final game at Seagoville.

It was the regional championship, again against rival Lincoln. Hellbent on delivering his team to the state tournament, Aldridge had scored 39 points in a game that was headed to the wire.

Then, a curious thing happened.

With the game on the line, Aldridge’s teammates stopped passing him the ball.

Barnett believes the other players’ ill-timed forgetfulness of the team’s best player was simply a case of youthful nerves being overtaken by the moment.

Allen remains convinced something more sinister happened that day.

“They froze him out,” Allen said. “Just out of jealousy.”

Seagoville lost on a tip-in at the buzzer by Joel Bosh, Chris’ little brother.

In the locker room afterward, Aldridge broke down and cried.

“He said, ‘Why coach? Why did they do that?’” Allen said. “It’s still something I have a hard time dealing with.”

Aldridge carried his scars from Seagoville all the way to Portland, where he purposefully kept an inner circle so small it practically didn’t exist.

Barnett sums up Aldridge this way: “He keeps people at bay until he can decide: friend or foe?”

There are those in NBA circles who wonder how Aldridge might fit in the famously familial locker room in San Antonio, where coach Gregg Popovich is big on team dinners and bonding excursions.

“It’s too early for all that,” Popovich said. “He’s a nice guy. He’s got a good sense of humor, so I think he’ll fit in nicely. But we’ll see.”

The search for real

Those who have known Aldridge longest do not deny his personality can be complicated.

“LaMarcus has a very small circle of trust, and you have to work hard to get in there,” said Barnes, set to begin his first season at Tennessee after 17 years in Austin. “Once you’re in his circle, nobody is more loyal than him.”

Aldridge can be generous and warm-hearted to those he loves.

Just before the start of his second season in Portland, Aldridge surprised his mother with a phone call to tell her she could retire from her job at Travelers Insurance, where she worked for 23 years as an underwriter.

He eventually moved Georgia to the posh Dallas suburb of Southlake.

When Georgia was diagnosed with breast cancer five years ago, it was Aldridge who arranged her treatment and made sure her bills were paid on time.

“He never let me see he was worried,” said Georgia, who is now cancer-free.

When Allen retired from coaching in 2013, Aldridge flew in from Portland to speak at his retirement roast.

Tossing off one-liners and offering a surprisingly spot-on impersonation of his high school coach, Aldridge stole the show. “He had the whole crowd going,” Barnett said. “He was a hit.”

Since succeeding Allen as Seagoville’s head coach 10 years ago, Brooks has made it a point never to ask Aldridge for anything. He doesn’t want to seem like he is using the school’s richest alum as a piggy bank.

One day a few years ago, however, Aldridge phoned Brooks out of the blue and asked how he could help the program. They settled on $3,000 for a new shooting gun.

Aldridge cut the check.

“LaMarcus is a good guy, a humble guy,” Brooks said. “But you get to that level, you have so many people coming at you. You almost get a little paranoid. You don’t know who is real.”

For Aldridge, the only true answer to that is family.

Home calling

In late June, just before the start of NBA free agency, a media crew hired by the Dallas Mavericks commandeered the gym at Seagoville High to film a promotional video.

Their mission was clear: convince Aldridge to come home.

Allen was one of the people interviewed for the film, to be used in the Mavs’ recruiting meeting with Aldridge a few days later in Los Angeles.

As Brooks watched the circus unfold outside his office, cameras and craft tables everywhere, he couldn’t help but shake his head in amusement.

“I told them, ‘You’re wasting your time,’” Brooks said. “I knew he wasn’t going to come back here.”

Brooks believed Aldridge wanted to be close to home — just not too close.

“You go back to your hometown, you have too many people pulling on your coattails,” Brooks said. “It can be a distraction. I don’t think LaMarcus wanted to deal with that.”

Having spent nearly a decade in Portland, with his 30th birthday looming, Aldridge indeed heard the clarion call of someplace home-ish.

He has a 5-year-old son, LaMarcus Jr., who lives in the Dallas area. He has a 6-year-old son, Jaylen, living outside of San Antonio.

Even before sitting down with Popovich and Spurs general manager R.C. Buford in L.A., Aldridge had San Antonio high on his list.

“He kept saying, ‘Mom, I want to be closer to my kids,’” Georgia Aldridge said. “I thought from the beginning it was going to be either Dallas or San Antonio.”

Allen urged Aldridge to remember what it was like growing up without a father around.

“If you can get to a team that has a chance to win an NBA championship, and you can be closer to your kids,” Allen counseled, “do that.”

On the night of July 3, Aldridge phoned his mother to tell her he had come to a decision. He was coming back to Texas to join the Spurs.

He informed Buford and Popovich the next day.

For Aldridge, the move to San Antonio feels like something of a rebirth — with one prime role reversal.

This time, it was his mother’s turn to cry.

“Finally,” Georgia Aldridge said, “he’s coming home.”

jmcdonald@express-news.net

Twitter: @JMcDonald_SAEN