On the interior, though, he was about to bust. He just had to speak on it. “We had a game that day, so we had shootaround around 10,” Crawford said. “I leave about there about 7:30. So I call everyone back home in Seattle. Now, granted, Seattle is a two-hour difference. So it’s 5:30 in the morning there. I’m trying to wake up everybody. Like, ‘I just met Michael.’ Only a few people received my calls, the rest didn’t wake up. But I was just so excited and I couldn’t believe it. I actually went back and told a couple of teammates. “I think I told A.J. Guyton and somebody else that I just met M.J. at shootaround that day. So that’s how it went, and that kind of catapulted everything. That summer, I started working out with him. We got so tight I just became part of his inner circle. He really embraced me and looked out for me.”