You've seen the highlight a hundred times. Jamal Crawford grabs the ball in the open court, takes off for the rim, then improvises some ridiculous move out of a Harlem Globetrotters video by passing the ball through his legs and up into the air for a perfect alley-oop to Blake Griffin.

Of all the dunks that have made Lob City Lob City, this is one of the cornerstones.

How in the heck did Crawford even see Griffin trailing the play?

How did he have time to pass the ball through his legs and still toss a perfect alley-oop?

It was one of the best dunks you'll ever see. But somewhere in South Seattle, his old high school coach Mike Bethea was laughing.

"He did the same thing at 16, only on that one he threw it off the backboard and dunked it himself," Bethea said.

Every NBA player has a high school coach who has stories like this from their glory days. Back when they were a man among boys and everyone started to realize they could make the NBA one day. But Crawford was on another level.

At 16 he was averaging 25 points a game against professional and college players in Doug Christie's summer league. By the time his high school season started, word had spread that there was a phenom at Rainier Beach High. SuperSonics stars Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp were regulars at his games.

CP3 and Crawford have led the Clips to the Pacific Division title. Noah Graham/NBAE/Getty Images

"He changed the face of high school basketball in the state of Washington," Bethea said. "There was just something special about Jamal when he was playing. Wherever he played, the gyms were packed. Everybody heard about him and wanted to come out and watch.

"There's not a kid who comes through Seattle now who doesn't try and have a little of Jamal's flair in their game."

It seemed as if he was destined for superstardom, and well on his way to it when he was drafted eighth overall in 2000. But the Bulls never really played him. Crawford averaged just 4.6 points in 17.2 minutes a game as a rookie. He tore his ACL working out with Michael Jordan the summer after his rookie season and played just 23 games the following year. Then in successive drafts, the Bulls took point guards Jay Williams from Duke and Kirk Hinrich from Kansas. Crawford played alongside them, but there was never a comfortable fit.

"That was tough, and I was immature at handling it all," Crawford said. "'Here we are, we're not the best team anyway, and I'm one of the top picks, why aren't you playing me?'"

Looking back on it 14 years later, Crawford knows exactly why the Bulls weren't playing him. He had all the talent in the world, but he wasn't fully formed as a basketball player. Was he a point guard or a shooting guard? Was he a shot-maker or a creator? Was he a superstar or a solid rotation player?

It took years to answer those questions. But now that he has, Jamal Crawford knows exactly what he is and who he should be: a sixth man.

"Growing up, it wasn't like I wanted to be a sixth man," Crawford said. "It only happened because I got to this point where I just wanted to win more than anything. When you bring one of your top scorers, your top players off the bench, it really gives your team balance."

His job is to score when Chris Paul and Griffin aren't on the court, whether it's normal rest over the course of a game, or when one of them is injured as Paul was for a large chunk of games in the middle of the season.

Crawford is averaging 18.6 points in 66 games this season -- most among NBA reserve players -- but 22.5 points and 5.3 assists a game when Paul has been out of the lineup.

"He's a starter on any other team in this league," Paul said. "He could be on our team as well if he wanted to, but he knows that role and he's the best at it."

Crawford won the NBA's Sixth Man of the Year award in 2009 as a member of the Atlanta Hawks. He finished second to New York's J.R. Smith last season. He's one of the leading candidates -- along with Chicago's Taj Gibson, San Antonio's Manu Ginobili, Phoenix's Markieff Morris and Oklahoma City's Reggie Jackson -- to win it again this year.