BOSTON -- There is a heartbreaking picture on Twitter from 2017 of Boston Celtics rookie Romeo Langford, arm around a young boy so small, his head isn’t visible without scrolling down in a web browser.

The foreground looks like any photo of a star basketball player and a young fan -- half a smile on Langford’s face, an entire smile on the child’s. But the background fills in the gaps: A brick building where the 5-year-old’s family had gathered for a visitation. A week prior to the photo, the boy’s mother passed away following a battle with cancer.

Langford’s high school coach Jim Shannon got the initial request: Would Langford be willing to stop by the visitation and help build the boy’s spirits up?

The family didn’t give the Langfords much notice -- the visitation was the same day they reached out. Shannon relayed the question to the family, and Langford’s father Tim asked the 17-year-old -- who was already one of the nation’s top basketball recruits -- when he arrived home from school. It was a heavy request for a high-school junior: On a painful day that will send ripples through a child’s entire life, will you be perhaps the lone bright spot?

Langford accepted happily.

“I felt bad for the kid,” Langford said. “That’s really sad, him being that age, and you don’t really know yet. It’s hard for a kid that age to understand death. Your mom’s not coming back. I just wanted to be there for him. If me being there helps the cause, I’m definitely going to do it.”

When Langford stepped out of the car, the boy lit up at the sight of the star basketball player. Langford said the duo didn’t do anything earth-shattering together -- just a couple of kids sitting on a bench throwing rocks outside the funeral home.

“Really, I just sat there and watched him play,” Langford said. “I really didn’t do too much. Just my presence there did a lot for him, I guess.”

The moment meant a lot both to the boy who lost his mother and for the husband who lost his wife. The father later tweeted the photo of his son and Langford -- the boy tiny, but beaming.

“Really want to thank you for stopping by to see my son,” the father wrote. “During a really tough time, you made his day. You are a class act.”

Much has been made of Celtics GM Danny Ainge’s comments shortly after the NBA Draft about picking “good guys” in addition to good players.

“That played a very big part into why we selected them,” Ainge said, referring to the entire draft class. “Who they are, not just what they are capable of doing on the court.”

With the other players the Celtics drafted, the likability is obvious. Grant Williams is gregarious and enthusiastic -- a self-described nerd who loves the board game Settlers of Catan. Carsen Edwards has a charisma that suggests he could be a leader in the NBA. Tremont Waters joked about ordering chicken wings and fries at a Chinese restaurant at the introductory press conference.

Langford, meanwhile, is more reserved by nature.

“Ro doesn’t talk a whole lot,” Shannon said. “He doesn’t have that type of personality where he’s going to call me up and talk for half an hour.”

But in New Albany, a town of just under 40,000 people where Shannon said Langford achieved “rock-star status,” the signs of his character are more obvious.

Like the time Langford and his father traveled 10 minutes across the Ohio River into Kentucky to visit a child in a Louisville hospital during Langford’s freshman season, before he broke onto the national scene. Three years later, a parent approached Langford’s father at a game and introduced the same child, now out of the hospital and moving around on his own. On the back of his hoodie? Langford’s name.

“That was a moment right there in itself,” Tim Langford said.

Or the time Langford was invited to visit a retirement community in New Albany. Langford agreed readily and met 20 retirees. According to Tim Langford, roughly 10 of them recognized his son, including one woman who never took pictures with anyone.

“She came over and said, ‘Romeo, will you take a picture with me?’” Tim Langford said. “The whole place was surprised: ‘She has never took a picture with no one.’”

Or the time Langford surprised the classroom of a former elementary school teacher with a visit during his senior year -- the height of his popularity. Langford’s favorite subject in school had been math, and his teacher kept his clippings on the wall, often using her former pupil as an example for her students. Langford’s visit was a thrill for the kids, and the school later requested he sign his elementary school jersey to hang on the wall.

Or the time Langford visited a classroom in Louisville at a school so rough, Tim Langford said it was difficult to keep a teacher in the classroom.

“I was surprised the kids knew Romeo,” Tim Langford said.

But sure enough: The kids recognized the national prep sensation and peppered him and his father with questions.

Or the time the local New Albany team made the Little League World Series. A player’s mother reached out to Tim Langford and asked if Romeo would send a video congratulating the players on their accomplishment and wishing them good luck.

“She said they hooked it up and played it right before the game,” Tim Langford said. “The team went wild.”

Early in Romeo’s career when the Langfords realized their son would have to deal with autograph requests, Tim told Romeo he should consider signing for everyone who asked.

“When you get to that stage in your life and kids come up to you and want your autograph and stuff, you don’t want to turn nobody down,” Tim Langford told his son. “If LeBron James walked in the airport or something and see him, and he signed a few autographs and then he comes to you and he just don’t have time or walk on by you, how would you feel?”

Romeo took that message to heart. After New Albany’s games, Langford would sit and sign for everyone who asked. For most of his sophomore season, that was less of an undertaking -- a few signatures here and there, particularly on the road. After Langford exploded onto the scene however, leading his team to a state title with a 46-point outpouring in the state semifinal, the Bulldogs often were forced to wait for an hour, an hour and a half, two hours, even three hours at times for their superstar to sign for everyone.

“As the season kept going, we’d be like, ‘Okay, let’s get a table, some sharpies, and let’s get it,’” Langford’s longtime friend Sean East, who will begin his college career at UMass in the fall, said. “Before the game, we would have that ready so we wouldn’t have to get home as late. It was crazy, but we had to adapt to that and just sit around and wait for him to be done.”

After one road game during his senior season, the line for autographs grew so long, the school let the Langfords use the library to finish their business. Throughout Langford’s senior year, the requests grew progressively stranger: Parents would hand over babies to sign and take pictures, while kids would present shoes, cell phones and cash for Langford to sign.

“I’m like, ‘Let’s hold up on the babies,’” Tim Langford said. “No more babies, no more holding babies. I had to stop that.”

Langford’s senior season came crashing down earlier than expected. In the regional semifinal, New Albany took on Warren Central. With the game tied at 62-62 and four seconds remaining, an opposing player drove the length of the floor and banked in a floater as the buzzer rang, ending Langford’s high school career. Video showed Langford taking a shove in the back on his way off the floor by a fan storming the court -- salt in a wide-open wound for a high school star coping with the end of a storied four-year career.

Tim Langford fought through a crowd of autograph seekers outside the locker room to get to his son. After telling Romeo he loved him and he played great, Tim Langford broached the topic of the autograph seekers outside.

“Yeah, I want to sign autographs,” Romeo told his father.

“That touched my heart,” Tim Langford said. “You lose on a last-second bucket, end of your high-school career, you can have mixed emotions. He went out there. That touched me. That showed so much.”

Langford’s potential was always obvious.

“He never really hit a wall,” Langford’s AAU coach Dion Lee said. “He just kept progressing, progressing, progressing. When you see that happening, you start getting to the terms of ‘special,’ words like that. A lot of people say, ‘This kid has a chance’ or ‘He could be.’ He passed the ‘He has a chance, he could be’ and started to get to the terms of ‘very special.’”

After opting to spend all four years at New Albany instead of joining a national prep powerhouse, Langford’s profile in the state had risen from “high-school phenom” to “local celebrity and hero.”

Langford committed to Indiana University in late April, more than a month after the buzzer-beater that ended his high-school season. Later that summer, he was asked to be a part of a parade in Madison, IN -- 45 minutes from New Albany. Seated in a convertible with his father, Langford was in the parade’s second-to-last car, trailed only by former NFL running back Ickey Woods. Woods spent his entire career with the Cincinnati Bengals -- the closest professional football team to the region.

As Langford’s car traveled the parade route, crowds approached the car to ask for autographs and photos. The foot traffic jammed the back of the parade up so thoroughly, someone asked the Langfords to pull over so Woods’ car could continue ahead.

“It was just crazy man,” Tim Langford said, chuckling. “I’m like, ‘This wasn’t New Albany, this was Madison.’”

The hype around Langford reached a fever pitch as the Hoosiers’ season approached. Indiana missed the NCAA tournament in 2017-18, its first season under Archie Miller, and when Langford signed, fans expected a savior.

That never quite materialized. Langford led the team in scoring as a freshman, posting 16.5 points per game while pulling down 5.4 rebounds, but he wasn’t the dominant guard many expected. That was at least partially due to an injury -- in November, Langford suffered a torn ligament in his right thumb that required surgery. Doctors told him he had a choice: Shut it down on the spot, get the surgery and salvage his draft stock (Langford entered the season fifth on ESPN’s recruiting rankings) or keep playing through the pain.

Langford opted for the latter, without telling his father about the injury or the prognosis.

“The main thing is I just wanted to be there for my team,” Langford said. “I didn’t want to let my team down. Wanted to be there for my brothers. I didn’t want them to think I was just sitting out. I knew I could play through it.”

The Hoosiers missed the tournament again, finishing 19-16. In early April, Langford declared for the NBA Draft and scheduled a surgery for his ailing thumb. His basketball career in the state of Indiana was over.

“I think there was a lot of pressure put on him, and I don’t think it was by the people at Indiana,” Shannon said. “I don’t think it was the coaches at Indiana or his teammates at Indiana. I just think it was people and fans in general. I think that people thought he was going to come in and just dominate from the word ‘Go.’ I think it was unfair, because Ro’s a great player, and he can do a lot of great things, but if your team’s not successful at times, I don’t think that should be laid on just one person. I felt like sometimes people were bashing him, and I didn’t think it was fair at all.”

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Four days after being drafted, Langford and the rest of the Celtics draftees made an appearance at the opening of a new basketball court in Roxbury. The court, built to NBA specifications, is a legendary one in Boston -- the Tobin Community Center, where Shabazz Napier’s name hangs in the rafters.

For the first time in his career, Langford won’t be the focus of every ounce of media attention in a market. Other Celtics rookies may co-opt some of the spotlight, and the Celtics have Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, and now Kemba Walker.

There will be plenty of adjustments for Langford. But as he transitions to the next part of his career, outside of Indiana, he still carries part of the state with him.

“I wanted my parents and the people around me to feel like they’re part of it too,” Langford said. “A lot of my friends, a lot of people back home, they was like, ‘I felt like I was walking on that stage.’ And that’s one thing I’m proud of. I can say New Albany, that’s me. That’s who I am.”