Thabo Sefolosha has been teammates with two Crowders — father and son

Whenever the old teammates talk, there’s always a point when Corey Crowder tries something he’s never been great at.

He attempts to speak French. And on the other end of the line, Thabo Sefolosha can’t help but laugh — no matter how many times he’s heard it.

“He laughs at me and everything, and he says, ‘You know you don’t speak French?’” Crowder said, laughing at the ritual. “But hell, at least I tried.”

Crowder’s French never has been good, but during the three years he spent as Thabo Sefolosha’s teammate in France, the younger player always was looking at him to learn other things. Sefolosha, then a teenager, always wanted to know: What was it like to play in the NBA? What does it take to get there?

“That was like a mentor for me,” Sefolosha said. “He kinda took me under his wing.”

Fast-forwarding to the present day, Sefolosha is wrapping up his 12th NBA season (albeit with an injury), and he’s doing it — to his great surprise — with Corey Crowder’s son as one of his teammates on the Utah Jazz.

How exactly does that happen? It’s rare that fathers and sons could share the same teammates. Melvin Booker, a guard who played a limited time in the league, faced off with Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett, players his son Devin Booker would later face off with as a member of the Phoenix Suns. Father and son have played together on the same team before in other sports, notably Ken Griffey Sr. and Jr.

The fact that Sefolosha could play with Corey Crowder, an NBA journeyman who carved out a career in Europe, and Jae Crowder, a bullish forward who joined the Jazz via trade this month, is a testament to how long his career has been. And because he played with Corey as an impressionable Swiss teen, it’s shaped his career in ways that are difficult to fully articulate.

“I wouldn’t say so much my game, but mostly things off the court, how I carry myself off the court,” Sefolosha said. “He taught me ‘Carry yourself as a professional.’ He taught me what to do in the lifestyle and playing in the NBA.”

Corey Crowder, a 6-foot-4 three-time All-American at Kentucky Wesleyan, had his taste of the NBA life. His first shot came (fittingly) with the Jazz, where he averaged 2.2 points in a meager 6.4 minutes per game. Crowder called himself a “plus or minus 20 guy,” meaning he would go in only when the Jazz were up by 20 or down by 20.

Money and additional playing time pushed Crowder to pursue a career in Europe, where he played for the better part of two decades. He was winding his way down in his mid-30s in France’s premier league in 2002 when he met Sefolosha, then a B-team player signed from his native Switzerland who was practicing with the A squad.

As teammates on Elan Chalon, a club just off the French-Swiss border, Sefolosha and Crowder both played wing. And even though he was on the tail end of his career, Crowder wasn’t about to hand over anything to the new kid.

“I wasn’t too old yet, so we’d go at it every day,” Crowder said. “I’d beat him up every day, and he’d always come back. No matter how much punishment he took, he’d come back. That’s the sign of a winner, someone who keeps coming back, like, ‘C’mon Corey, let’s play one-on-one.’”

After taking his lumps, Sefolosha came to earn Crowder’s respect. They talked often, especially about Sefolosha’s favorite topic: Crowder’s time in the NBA. Sefolosha asked about what different guys like Karl Malone and John Stockton did and how different players played.

Crowder talked, too. He had a young son in the States who was a promising athlete in school. He hoped that the kid would find his own way to the NBA.

“He was telling me, actually, about Jae back then, like, ‘Oh, that’s my son. He’s in high school right now. He’s gonna get big,’ and all this,” Sefolosha said. “It’s funny how things go full circle.”

It wasn’t long after Sefolosha left the French league that Crowder decided to retire at the age of 36. They had been teammates for three seasons, but they stayed friends. Sefolosha estimates that Crowder has been to see him play at least once in every season of his NBA career, particularly when he played with the Atlanta Hawks.

So Sefolosha naturally made a call to Corey right after he learned the Jazz had traded for Jae from the Cleveland Cavaliers. Corey always had dreamed of the two playing against each other in the NBA, and one of his most prized possessions is a picture of Jae, with the Celtics, facing off against Sefolosha, then with the Hawks. But he never dreamed that they would play on the same team, playing for the organization where he got his NBA shot — an organization he still has a warm spot for.

“Now to see [Jae] in a Jazz uniform, to think he used to walk around in my practice gear — it’s kind of weird,” Corey said. “I’m happy. He gets a chance to write his own story.”

It used to be a regret of Corey Crowder that he didn’t give the NBA more of a chance. When he and Sefolosha were teammates, he used to say that he could’ve made it if he just had hung in there. Now 48 and living in Fort Myers, Fla., with a wife and three young daughters, he no longer feels that way. Crowder reasons that life’s paths have an unpredictable course, and if you spend too much time worried about a missed opportunity, you risk taking your current blessings for granted.

That’s what he told his son Jae throughout a difficult stint in Cleveland, when he wasn’t putting together the same production he had in Boston.

“I don’t sugarcoat anything,” Corey Crowder said. “If things are not going good, McDonald’s is hiring every single day. We can whine about the things that are going wrong or we can pick ourselves up and figure out what we can do.”

Jae Crowder seems to have figured out In six games with the Jazz how to make the best of his new situation. He’s averaging 13 points and 4.3 rebounds, and he’s been a helpful piece for Utah. He sealed a win Saturday against the Dallas Mavericks with crucial free throws.

Coach Quin Snyder said he admires presence and toughness, two qualities those who played with Corey Crowder can remember well.

“It’s crazy, right?” Sefolosha said, laughing. “It definitely doesn’t make me feel young.”