The party continued in the living room, but Jae Crowder suddenly needed a moment alone.

Days earlier, he had signed a five-year, $35-million contract with the Boston Celtics. "One of the best days of my life," he said, but the magnitude of the new deal -- what it meant to his life, what it said about his resilience -- did not set in immediately.

Crowder's journey to the NBA wasn't like everyone else's. During high school, he did not receive a single Division I basketball scholarship offer. During junior college, his coach almost kicked him off the team. During Crowder's first few months at Marquette, he argued with coach Buzz Williams daily and contemplated an early exit from the school.

Even after reaching the NBA, Crowder needed almost three full seasons to land a big role. A lack of playing time tore him up until a trade to the Celtics shot his career to another level. They needed a wing just like him: versatile, big, eager for every challenge. He emerged as a two-way threat and they rose up the Eastern Conference standings, player and team linked together in their climb.

Now, it was all hitting him. Leaving some friends behind in his Miami home, Crowder walked across his bedroom floor and reclined onto the mattress.

"All the stuff that I've been through," he says now, "everything I've been through, I just started to replay in my head."

The Howard Days

In late October 2009, tears gathered in Crowder's eyes. Since the beginning of his lone junior college season at Howard College (he also played the previous season at South Georgia Tech), he had clashed with Mark Adams. The head coach demanded a lot out of his players. They often practiced twice in a day, and if those sessions did not go well, Adams sometimes called everyone back to the gym later in the night. He wanted his team to be one of the country's top defenses and refused to let his players slide. Even his stars, like Crowder.

Nobody questioned Crowder's talent. He went on to win the National Junior College Player of the Year award and lead Howard to its first-ever national championship. Nobody questioned his competitiveness, either. During the regional tournament, he celebrated a flurry of 3-pointers by running directly toward the stands with his tongue out, screaming. Why the stands? The No. 1 team in the country, Midland College, was watching the game, and Crowder wanted to let everybody know Howard would be no easy out. Years later, Celtics fans would see the same mentality in a playoff series against LeBron James.

Watching the scene, Adams thought, "We shouldn't wake those guys up." Midland was loaded with talent. Jonathon Simmons went on to play for the San Antonio Spurs. Darrell Williams signed with Oklahoma State. Brockeith Pane earned All-WAC honors at Utah State. Ty Nurse started at Texas Tech. Crowder couldn't wait to rumble with them all.

That summer, the same desire led him to develop a close friendship with Williams, a physical force. After realizing they were both taking summer classes, Williams decided to drive an hour every weekend to work out with Crowder, figuring they would push each other like no one else could. Sometimes they played 1-on-1 or 2-on-2 in a Texas gym so hot they slipped on each other's sweat.

"It was like World War 3 when we played each other," Williams remembered. "A real damn fight."

If Crowder lost, he sometimes left the gym and walked home. When he stayed at the gym, he and Williams wondered what all the NCAA Division I players might be doing and then tried to do more.

"When I was tired, and I saw him doing something, that gave me extra energy. And vice versa," Williams said. "We just pushed each other. And that's what made us even closer."

Years later, Williams plays professionally in Serbia and still stays with Crowder every summer. Five days a week, they go through basketball drills and strength-and-conditioning work. They switch off between yoga and boxing on Saturdays before allowing themselves a relaxing Sunday.

The two friends have plenty of memories to discuss from their one year of junior college matchups. Late in the regular season, Crowder ruined Midland's hopes of an undefeated year with a contested 3-pointer in the final minute. After the shot, he said he visualized the play happening before it did. The next day Midland's coach, Ross Hodge, berated his team at practice.

"This dude was kicking our ass in his sleep the night before," Hodge said.

Incredibly, it was actually the first time Crowder had visualized making a game-winning shot. His father, Corey, who played 58 games with the Utah Jazz and San Antonio Spurs, recommended the visualization process years before that. He had asked Jae what he did to prepare for games, and Jae said, "Actually, I just go out and play." Even after his father's chat, Jae didn't initially take to the advice. Failing to see the benefits of imaginary basketball, he returned to his old laissez-faire approach for a long time. He didn't try visualization again until a batch of nerves struck him before his first junior college contest.

"I played the game in my head, like my dad told me to do," he said. "And from that point on, man, I do it every game."

What differentiates Crowder's visualization process is that he doesn't just think about himself slamming home dunks or pouncing on opponents for steals. He also thinks about all the things that can go wrong -- foul trouble, poor shooting, a streak of turnovers.

"All good, that's not how the game's played," he said. "I think about a real game. It's not always going to be good, so I still try to fight through the good stuff and bad stuff and hope for the best."

No amount of visualization could have prepared Crowder for the emotional meeting with Adams. During early practices, Crowder had "gone against the grain" too often. He wasn't receiving all of Adams' coaching the right way or submitting to the team concept. The coach told his best player he was ready to move on with or without him.

"That's when I really had a realization: I can't go back home," Crowder remembered. "I can't go back and be nothing, and just waste this time, and waste all the hard work I put in to get to the point I was at. I couldn't let that go down. I couldn't let my mom down. I couldn't let my dad down. It hit me that I had to really buy into what he was saying. I had to buy into being a better player and being able to be coached. I think at that point, I realized that he had my best interest at heart. He wanted to help me get to the next level. I just had a realization within myself. I couldn't turn around at that point."

"I want to be here," he told Adams.

"And after that," Adams said, "he was like the model, perfect player."

Marquette Culture Shock

The irony of Crowder's nightmarish first two months at Marquette? They were exactly what he wanted. Plenty of other schools recruited him, but he chose Marquette largely because the head coach there at the time, Buzz Williams, never promised him anything but work. Other coaches told Crowder he would start or play a load of minutes, but Williams vowed Crowder would need to earn everything he received. The forward committed to Marquette without ever visiting the campus.

"He was being real with me, and I feel like all the other coaches weren't. I didn't like that," Crowder said. "I knew it wasn't going to be easy or anything. Him being different from all those other coaches I talked to, it just stood out. And I just wanted to be a part of that culture of him making me work."

Crowder wasn't ready for the culture, though. For about two weeks of the preseason, Marquette's players started their days with extreme conditioning drills designed to test their toughness, redesign their mentalities, and lift them into elite physical shape. Complicating the tasks, the players didn't just complete all the exercises by themselves. Hoping to form the tightest type of team bond, Williams split everybody into groups. If one player failed the exercise, everyone did. And then the group would have to do it all again. Former Marquette player Trent Lockett once called the experience "the worst thing I've ever been through in my life."

"It hits them with a ton of bricks right at the beginning," Williams said. "We start full bore and when you're not prepared, it's a heavy burden to carry."

By the time Crowder arrived at the school, most of his teammates had already been working out together for weeks, if not longer. Despite all of his previous chats with Williams, Crowder believed he would walk right in and start.

"I was the National Juco Player of the Year," Crowder said, "so I thought I was a big shot."

"I think when he got there, he thought, 'Hey, this is going to be light,'" said Chicago Bulls All-Star Jimmy Butler, Crowder's Marquette teammate for one year. "Not with Buzz. Buzz don't give a damn what your previous accolades were. You're going to be treated like everybody else. You're going to be treated like you were no good at basketball."

Crowder got into shoving matches. He cussed out teammates. He argued with coaches. "Anything you could think of," he said, "I was doing it. All the knucklehead stuff." The outbursts weren't occasional, either.

"He was fighting us every day," Williams said. "I was fighting him every day."

Butler, a senior, considered himself the team leader. Crowder clashed with him, too.

Another irony: Marquette offered Crowder a scholarship partly because of his great attitude. One day during the forward's lone season at Howard, Adams called Williams. The two coaches had known each other for years, and Williams trusted the advice: Come see Jae Crowder. He's better than any player I've ever coached. Williams hopped on a flight to see one of Crowder's games, but Crowder was terrible. He fouled out, scored only a bucket or two and turned the ball over far too often. According to Adams, about 30 or 40 other Division I coaches attended the game, mostly to see Crowder. Most left shaking their heads, but not Williams.

As Crowder recalled, "At the end of the game he still told me I had a full-ride offer to Marquette. And I was like, 'What the hell?' I just played the worst game I could play, and this guy just offered me a Division I scholarship."

Why? When Crowder hit the bench with foul trouble, he waved his towel for his teammates' success. When Adams called timeouts, Crowder reached the court to offer high-fives before anyone else. So many college coaches were watching the worst game of Crowder's season, but he just wanted to help his team any way he could. That night, he was the "most passionate, best teammate/assistant coach" Williams had ever seen.

"I absolutely love him," Williams told Adams. "I want to sign him. You say he's the best player you've ever coached. I trust you."

Trust took a little while for Crowder to develop at Marquette. Initially, his conditioning lagged behind everyone else's. Williams believes the junior college transfer was rebellious "not because he was trying to be a jerk, but because without saying it he was embarrassed he wasn't at the level he needed to be." Some days, the conditioning drills were so tough Crowder considered giving up.

"I didn't quit because I felt like I came too far to quit," he said.

He started to adapt. Within about two months, he changed his approach to everything. In the words of Williams, Crowder and Butler "became a two-headed monster, like, I got you, you got me, and it just kind of infused among the rest of the team."

Marquette reached the Sweet 16 that season, and Crowder finished third on the team in scoring. The following year, he was voted honorable mention All-Big East in the preseason but proceeded to win the conference Player of the Year award.

"To go from where he was to where he finished in a two-year period, that's bordering on miraculous," Williams said. "By the time he got to his senior year, he was the perfect example of what you want."

"When he got there he thought he was going to come in and do whatever he wanted," Butler added. "And then he figured, 'Yo, Buzz has a lot of guys that play hard, that are just like me.' And then he realized, 'I'm going to work on my game.' When he got to Marquette and that mother------ started to work, that's why he went from being National Juco Player of the Year to Big East Player of the Year. That mother------ worked."

A Welcome Trade

For years, Butler told Crowder his time would come in the NBA. Detractors wondered what position Crowder would play, but Butler never doubted his friend would establish himself in the league.

Still, after starting 16 games for the Dallas Mavericks as a rookie, Crowder experienced a reduction in playing time during his second season. Believing he had only improved over the summer, he didn't like the decision or agree with it, and requested a meeting with head coach Rick Carlisle. During their conversation, Carlisle explained Crowder would receive spot minutes.

"And I had to deal with it," Crowder said.

He had been overlooked before. In high school, more colleges wanted him for football than basketball. After breaking his hand during his senior season on the gridiron, Crowder, a quarterback, decided football wasn't for him. Middle Tennessee and Eastern Carolina wanted him to play that sport, but his father had played basketball and that was always his real love. Crowder chose to focus on the hardwood knowing he would need to attend junior college to convince Division-I schools to take him. He always appreciated challenges. Think back to the tongue-wagging incident at Howard.

"That's what made me really like him," said Darrell Williams, "just knowing he wouldn't back down from nobody. No matter what it was, he was going to compete."

Everybody agrees on this: Crowder wastes little time during preparation. Every drill, every shot, every second he's on the court, they're all designed to improve a specific aspect of his game. His minutes kept falling in Dallas, but he kept working.

Finally, in December 2014, the Mavericks traded him to the Celtics. On the flight to Boston, he sensed the other two players the Celtics acquired in the deal, Brandan Wright and Jameer Nelson, weren't thrilled to move from a contender to a young, developing team. Crowder? He wanted the trade. Thankful the Mavericks granted his wish, he knew his opportunity had finally arrived.

The success since?

"It's not a surprise to me," Butler said. "It's not a surprise to him. It may be a surprise to everybody else. But I know Jae. I've seen Jae grow. He's going to continually get better. He's not complacent. He doesn't settle. Never tell that kid that he can't do something, because I'll bet my contract on it he'll prove you wrong."

More Work Left

One day before Crowder's contract signing, Buzz Williams called. The coach, now at Virginia Tech, attends a lot of his former players' important moments. He planned to fly to Boston for the big day with one stipulation: I'll show up when you work out.

Prouder of Crowder's dedication than any long-term contract, Williams stood on the court in a suit as the forward went through drills. The message was obvious -- don't forget what carried you to this point.

How could Crowder forget? At every stop, basketball could have broken his spirit. When he returned to Miami after the contract signing, all the memories struck him hard. Laying back and looking up at the ceiling, Crowder thought, "Oh my God."

He took some deep breaths and remembered everything. Tears flowed as he thought back to the meeting with Adams, the frustrations in Dallas, the times he considered leaving Marquette. He realized the pain built him to respond to the toughest tests.

"It was frustrating but it was all worth it," he thought. "There were good and bad times, but through all of the times I just kept working, and kept being in the gym, and kept believing in myself. And it all paid off."

With a starting job, a sizable contract and growing respect around the NBA, it has all paid off handsomely for Crowder. His versatility has changed so much for the Celtics and his toughness has helped turn them into an emerging force in the Eastern Conference. He appreciates how far he has come already but wants more, and has learned enough on his bumpy journey to understand he can promise only one thing in the future: work.

"It's all I know."