Tyson Cleotis Chandler (born October 2, 1982) is an American professional basketball player who plays for the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Chandler was the second overall pick of the 2001 NBA draft by the Los Angeles Clippers, then was immediately traded to the Chicago Bulls. He has also played for the New Orleans Hornets, Charlotte Bobcats, Dallas Mavericks, New York Knicks, Phoenix Suns and Los Angeles Lakers. As starting center for Dallas, he played an integral role in the franchise\'s first NBA championship in 2011. He has been named to the NBA All-Defensive Team three times. While with New York, Chandler was voted the NBA Defensive Player of the Year in 2012, when he was also named to the All-NBA Third Team. He won gold medals with the US national team in the 2010 FIBA World Championship and the 2012 Summer Olympics.\n', '

Chandler was born to Frank Chandler and Vernie Threadgill, though he did not meet his father Frank until later in his life. He grew up in a family farm in Hanford, California, just south of Fresno, California. Chandler began playing basketball at the age of three years on a basket Chandler\'s grandfather, Cleotis, fixed on a tree. Chandler grew up doing farm work such as milking cows, slopping pigs, and cultivating crops. At the age of nine years, Chandler and his mother moved to San Bernardino, California; he was already nearly six feet tall. As a child, Chandler was teased because of his height; children on his school basketball team joked that he was older than he really was, and that he had been left back several times in school.\n', '

Chandler and his family then moved to Compton, California, where he enrolled at Dominguez High School, a school known for its athletics, producing basketball players such as Dennis Johnson and Cedric Ceballos. In his freshman year, Chandler made the varsity team and played with future NBA player Tayshaun Prince, who was then a senior. With the Dominguez Dons, Chandler became a teenage sensation; current players such as DeMar DeRozan watched him play and claimed "he was like Shaq". Point guard Brandon Jennings, who was a ball boy for Dominguez at the time, said, "You\'d see the girls around Tyson, the Escalade he drove, and you wanted to be like him".\n', 'Chandler earned accolades from Parade Magazine and USA Today, and was selected to the McDonald\'s High School All-America Team. As a freshman, he was profiled on current affairs TV program 60 Minutes.\n', '

Return to Tyson Chandler Autograph Profile