Markel Brown already has accomplished a great deal in his life. He is a former Mr. Basketball in Louisiana, went on to be a four-year contributor at Oklahoma State and now is a rookie guard in the NBA with the Nets.

He just wishes he could have shared some of those achievements with his mother, Antoinette.

“It just hurts,” Brown said, “to only remember seeing your mom in a nursing home.”

Those are Brown’s only memories of his late mother. When he was 3 years old, Antoinette suffered a brain aneurysm that forced her to live in a nursing home until her death in 2006 — and for him and his sister, Moryia, 3 months old at the time, to be taken in by their paternal grandmother, Jerri Mae Eggers.

His father, Damian, has been in and out of prison throughout Brown’s life. His uncle, David, died in February 2007 at 21 when he rushed into a burning home to try and save two elderly women — 106-year-old Annie Guillot and her 79-year-old daughter, Edna Carr. His cousin, Keiunna Collins, was shot and killed in October of last year at 18.

It’s safe to say that Brown has lost plenty since he was born on Jan. 29, 1992, in Alexandria, a small city smack in the middle of the Louisiana. But it is a journey that has forged Brown’s character, and given him fuel to overcome the many losses he already has suffered in life in order to achieve his dreams.

“It makes you want to make it that much more,” Brown said, dressed in Nets warmups, after a recent practice. “I’ve been through a lot of stuff. I’m sure other players have, but it’s always hard losing family members or not being able to come home and see your family when you have a death in the family, things like that. … It’s hard.”

There was nothing easy about Brown’s childhood, which he spent virtually all of in the care of his grandmother. Brown admitted he didn’t know much about his mom’s medical issues — her aneurysms started when he was a toddler — and his only memories came from brief visits to see her in the nursing home.

“I wasn’t even old enough to comprehend what it was,” Brown said.

Meanwhile, Brown’s father, Damian, has been in and out of prison for as long as he can remember. And though the two of them have a relationship now, the fact he has been out of Brown’s life for so long has left a gap that can’t be bridged.

“When he wasn’t in jail, he was around,” Brown said. “But the fact that he was in and out … I do talk to him every once in a while, but I am so used to not talking to him much that we don’t talk on a daily basis.”

All of that took a toll on Brown. He and his sister grew up under the watchful eye of their grandmother, who took them in and raised them after raising her eight children. Brown came to call her Mom — on his Oklahoma State bio page, he is listed as the son of Jerri Mae Eggers — and she did her best to give Brown and his sister everything they needed.

“She was the best,” Brown said. “She didn’t have to take on two kids after she raised eight herself. … She was the type of person that opened arms to anyone. Guys out the neighborhood, anyone was welcome in our house. If you’re stopping by she’ll make you a plate [of food]. … She’s that type of grandma.

“She would let the phone bill get cut, just to provide for me and my sister. You couldn’t ask for much more.”

But for all the love his grandmother showered upon him, it still wasn’t easy for Brown growing up. He said there were times when his grades would slip because he was worrying about everything happening in his personal life, and if everything was going to work out for him and his family.

“All types of things,” Brown said, when asked what he would worry about. “Who is going to be there for my sister? My dad is in and out of jail. My grandma’s not working, so who is going to pay the bills? My grandpa is getting old, so he’s not able to work much longer. Family members dying.”

All of that helped make it easy for Brown to turn down LSU, among other schools, in order to head to Stillwater, Okla., and play for Oklahoma State when he graduated from Alexandria’s Peabody Magnet High School after a standout prep career in 2010.

“The neighborhood I lived in, not too many people make it out,” Brown said. “I was just happy to be able to travel somewhere else. I wanted to be out of the state, at the end of the day, so I wouldn’t be distracted by everything that’s going on at home between friends and family. … Even though it still catches up with you, it felt good to be away because I wasn’t able to be around all of the bad stuff.”

It was a motivation to get away from the “bad stuff” all around him that kept Brown in pursuit of his dreams whenever his focus would waver. He wanted to set a good example for his sister, now is a freshman studying nursing at Southern University, and he wanted to avoid being one of the many people who didn’t make it out of his neighborhood in Alexandria, and spend their time now living in the past, unable to move forward.

“You’ve got people who drop out, people who don’t go to college,” Brown said. “Friends just hang around the hood, selling drugs and stuff like that. I still have friends like that to this day … most have stopped, but because they went down that path, you can’t do anything else.

“We used to have a park that we used to play at, and growing up there you always heard guys talking about, ‘I used to be this good, I used to be that good.’ I didn’t want to be one of those people.”

So off Brown went to Oklahoma State, where he became two-time All-Big XII guard for the Cowboys, pairing with Marcus Smart to form a dynamic, athletic backcourt for coach Travis Ford. Though Smart was destined to become a lottery pick, going No. 6 overall to the Celtics in this year’s draft, Brown was left to wait for his name to be called.

And wait he did. And wait. And wait. All the way through the first round, when NBA Commissioner Adam Silver handed the announcing duties over to his deputy, Mark Tatum. And still Brown waited. As the second round moved into the 40s, his confidence began to waver — maybe he wouldn’t be drafted after all.

“Everyone had these big expectations from me, being the big guy from the neighborhood and going to Oklahoma State,” Brown said. “Everyone expected me to be drafted. Even I expected to be drafted. But at that time, you get nervous. You want to hear your name called.”

And then, with the 44th pick by Brooklyn, it was.

“It was one of those moments where you couldn’t believe it,” Brown said with a smile. “It was so surreal. … It was like the whole world paused for a minute.

“To hear my name called that night was probably was one of the biggest things to ever happen to me.”

The Nets are high on Brown — a wiry, 6-foor-4 guard who is an athletic marvel, which he proved at the combine with a 43.5-inch vertical leap. He has dealt with some injuries since being drafted — he broke a bone in his right hand this summer, then spent a week sidelined with an illness during training camp before missing Wednesday’s game in Philadelphia after suffering a hip pointer during Monday’s practice.

But Nets coach Lionel Hollins finally put on the active roster for the first time for a game last week, and Brown saw his first NBA action in garbage time of Saturday’s loss in San Antonio, hitting a 3-pointer for his first NBA basket. It might have been a small, meaningless moment to many, but the magnitude of the moment wasn’t lost on Brown.

“It was big for me,” he said. “Who knows if I will ever score in this league again?

“But it left me hungry. I liked the feeling of being out there on the court, and it left me hungry for more.”

After everything Markel Brown has had to overcome so far, fighting for more minutes pales in comparison.