Let's get this out of the way: Jackson Vroman wasn't tight with Justin Bieber or Paris Hilton.
Not according to his father, Brett, who'd teased him about it.
They went to the same parties, yes.
Once or twice, Vroman's outsized presence might've drawn them in, leaving them to wonder if he, and not they, was that which all else orbited. He is said to have had that effect.
But all we know is that they posed together for some photos.
Such images speak most freely about the recent history of the onetime Bountiful teen, found dead last month in a Los Angeles pool after an abbreviated stint in the NBA and a lucrative career overseas.
More than a half-dozen of Vroman's best friends either never returned requests for comment or felt a story wasn't something Vroman would have wanted.
The experiences they shared with Vroman were priceless, one said. Stories can feel cheap.
And so, much of what we know comes from Vroman's Instagram account, which cannot lie, even if there are limits to the extent that it can tell the truth:
Vroman rides a tandem bike across the desert.
Vroman attends Cannes Film Festival in a penguin-print onesie.
Vroman fires a fully automatic M4 carbine off Mount Charleston.
Vroman watches the Monaco Grand Prix aboard a yacht, sandwiched between more beautiful women than he can fit within his 7-foot wingspan.
In sum: Vroman lives as you never will.
How?
Relativity tells us that time slows for things in motion — a day traveling at 99 percent the speed of light is a week for the rest of us. To prove it, scientists have observed lithium ions accelerated to 40 percent of light speed.
They may as well have observed Vroman. From the start, he was in motion, touching the lives of many more people than most will ever meet.
A baby Vroman ran long before he could balance himself, crashing into things but seldom crying and earning the nickname "Indestructo."
And he flew. Vroman and his sister, Lauren, spent their earliest years abroad while Brett — a Provo High 7-footer who won a national championship at UCLA and dressed 11 games for the Utah Jazz — played in Italy, Spain and Greece.
Incidentally, soccer was Vroman's first love. Brett brought his son basketballs and soon after found himself swimming into the ocean to retrieve them.
At 8, Vroman's parents divorced, and he and Lauren went to live with their mother, Leslie, in Anchorage, Alaska.
When they were returned to the custody of Brett, working two jobs in Bountiful, more than three years later, "it was all I could do to just get them fed and clothed," he said.
Vroman didn't make things easy.
His shenanigans included skipping school for almost a full year to play at the old Deseret Gym, wearing gym shorts under his school clothes and explaining to adult players that he was home-schooled.
While growing from 6-2 to 6-10, he bounced from Highland to Skyline to an alternative school, back to Skyline and then to Viewmont.
The only college coach to show interest was then-Snow assistant Curtis Condie, but Brett, too, believed.
He told Jackson: "You might think I'm crazy, but you can play in the NBA. How hard are you willing to work to do that?"
"I'll do anything," he said.
Vroman was an instant star at Snow. Then-Iowa State head coach Larry Eustachy visited to call on Dixie standout Jaime Lloreda, but Condie told him "the real player's at Snow Junior College, and his name's Jackson Vroman."
Eustachy said he was astounded by Vroman's toughness during a three-on-three tournament. "Borderline dirty," he said. An older team threatened to retaliate with guns, and Vroman told them, "Bring 'em."
Brett asked Eustachy, "Do you still want Jackson?"
"Hell yeah," he said.
Vroman committed when Eustachy visited him on Sept. 11, 2001. He'd later be pursued by Utah's Rick Majerus, but too late, Eustachy said. "His word was gold."
No player ever reminded Eustachy so much of himself. Both were pranksters who'd skipped some high school. Both were loyal, hard-nosed and hard-partying. When Eustachy came under fire for his off-court behavior, Vroman marched into the president's office and said that if he fired Eustachy, he could wave goodbye to Vroman and the rest of the Cyclones.
He nonetheless stayed at Iowa State after Eustachy resigned, and new head coach Wayne Morgan showed mercy on Vroman after he was found in possession of marijuana and charged with a DUI. Vroman led the Cyclones to the NIT semis.
But Eustachy and Vroman — the only player to call him "Larry" and not "Coach" — remained close.
Years later, Vroman, then playing for New Orleans, was visiting Eustachy in Hattiesburg, Miss., when Hurricane Katrina hit.
The kindred spirits waited out the storm together, Vroman going outside to breathe in the air as trees fell around him.
"He was tripping out," Eustachy said. "… He was in his moment."
Although the storm left debris strewn across Interstate 59, and "there was no way you could hike out, let alone get a car out," Eustachy said, Vroman somehow drove to Atlanta.
Eustachy believes he was the only person to leave Hattiesburg at the time.
"That's who he is. You say you can't do it, he does it."
Vroman worked out for 18 teams before the 2004 draft, more than any player agent Andrew Vye can remember. He would be selected No. 31 overall by Chicago and immediately traded to Phoenix, a very good team that didn't have much use for him.
Early in his rookie season, he was walking with his dad at a Scottsdale mall when he took a call on his Bluetooth piece that made his jaw drop, Brett remembers.
"He said, 'I just got traded.' "
New Orleans, on the other hand, was bad enough that they sometimes leaned on the rookie second-rounder. Vroman scored 17 points in a blowout loss to Tim Duncan's Spurs, and at times fit the profile of a longtime NBA role player — a big man with toughness, skill and stamina.
It wasn't to be. The next season, with the Jazz visiting New Orleans, Vroman caught a Chris Paul pass and dunked two-handed, losing his grip on the rim and falling with both arms stretched out behind him. His wrist snapped under his weight. His NBA days were over.
Nine screws and two metal plates later, Vroman embarked an overseas career that would take him to Spain, Lithuania, Iran, China, South Korea, the Philippines and Puerto Rico.
He made more money overseas and played a more meaningful role.
In Girona, Spain, he once chanced a $10,000 trip to New York during two days off for New Year's Eve, just one week after he'd been reprimanded for missing practice due to flight complications on a Christmas trip to London. (He was the first player at the next practice, he wrote for USA Today's HoopsHype blog.)
He spontaneously became a Lebanese citizen to play for the national team after bonding with Rony Seikaly, reaching the semis of the 2009 FIBA Asia Championship.
And he was one of the first Americans to play in Iran, where, dismayed that the underground alcohol scene did not include Patron, he persuaded a dealer to import 50 bottles of his favored tequila at $130 each. Patron is now a Tehran staple, he wrote on HoopsHype.
But Vroman found China — the best money — dull. People gawked at him. He couldn't communicate.
He'd Skype his many friends from his hotel room, thinking more and more about how he'd spend his offseason in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and the Spanish resort island Ibiza.
Vroman's free-throw percentage plummeted to below 35 percent at his final three stops — his last in Puerto Rico in 2014. Teams fouled him in crunch time. His value dropped.
After Vye "near-missed" on deals with high-caliber teams in Greece and China, Vroman seemed to lose interest in playing professional basketball.
He never formally retired.
As if he weren't tall enough, Vroman would stand on a couch or a table and become giant.
He wore costumes.
He juggled.
He screamed, "Shots!" and served everyone in the vicinity, whether he knew them or not.
He knew every DJ, party organizer and freewheeling multimillionaire. Before parties, he'd stress out that somebody — anybody — might not come. Yet a thousand people would tell you he was their best friend.
"He hung out with some of the most common folk when he could, and then he hung out with the rock stars and everything in between, and he was never star-struck," Eustachy said. "The stars were struck by him."
He was more lithe than lanky, and had grace enough to pose for photos standing upside-down, balanced on his forearms, his body bisecting models and ocean views.
His angular face could believably effect sly, pleading, proud, tough — you name it — and it was paired with a clever wit.
He was a bad boy who knew it, but he cared for his friends. Vroman cried as one friend was in the throes of drug addiction and refused to hear reason. At parties, he secretly poured water for another friend, who wanted to enjoy parties sober without having to explain herself to inebriated guests.
Life was better with Jackson Vroman, people would later say.
When Vroman ate dinner, it had to be with 20 people, at the nicest restaurants, and he had to order everything.
Once or twice a week, he'd take a night off, but that still meant bowling, or inviting friends over to eat delivery food and watch Netflix documentaries.
Vye set up Vroman with a money manager for the first four or five years of his career, but "Jackson sort of wanted to do his own thing" after that, he said.
He made a lot of money playing overseas, and he spent it.
After Vroman decided in China that he wanted a small, hypoallergenic dog, he naturally settled on a $5,000 Bichon Frise, flown from Paris with an escort to Carlisle, Penn., where Vroman's friend flew from Miami to pick him up. All on his dime.
(Hugo Bauce, as he'd be known, was a celebrity in his own right, professionally fluffed and dyed colors for various occasions.)
He made wealthy friends and stayed for months in places owned by the likes of former VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos.
But he died owning very little beyond Hugo and his 1969 Ford Bronco.
For a time, Brett wondered when his son would tire of that lifestyle. He bristled when Vroman's friends called themselves "The Fam" — Vroman had a family and would realize someday that these people didn't really care about him, Brett thought.
"But I didn't find that to be true when I went down and met him," he said. "He had some people who really loved him and thought he was really special."
Google has no tact.
When Brett pecks out his son's name on a keyboard made for smaller hands, the search engine suggests "Jackson Vroman dead," "Jackson Vroman death."
Eustachy, likewise, found it strange the extent to which Vroman's mainstream legacy is that he died young, a friend of Justin Bieber.
His death was ruled accidental. Security camera footage shows him falling into the pool at the Los Angeles home where he resided. He was found by a roommate the next day.
Roommate Amrou Manaseer wrote on his Instagram account that he wished they'd gone mountain biking in Tahoe, like they'd planned, or that he'd stopped outside to smoke a cigarette before bed.
Vroman told his father that he'd felt anxious lately. Brett said he needed to commit one way or another: retire from basketball, or give it another shot. He was wrestling with it.
The last time Brett saw his son was in March, for the 40th anniversary of UCLA's 1975 national championship.
As always, Jackson had treated his father like an international dignitary, arranging for a limousine to pick him up and taking him to his favorite spots.
Brett never fully understood how his son was able to pull it off. How was it that when they went to a packed comedy club, staff immediately cleared out a packed center table while the emcee announced, "Jackson Vroman's in the house"?
He tried to get some answers when he attended a private, invitation-only memorial service in Beverly Hills and a much larger gathering at which 300 doves were released and people watched a video about Vroman on a large outdoor screen.
"It was interesting to get different opinions," he said. "They said he just had a real unique ability to bring people together and make them feel included, but even when they say that, I don't know exactly what that means."
Vroman received social media tributes from NFL players Reggie Bush and Shaun Phillips, as well as Instagram renegade Dan Bilzerian. Popular graffiti artist Alec Monopoly painted a mural of Vroman — in a onesie, holding Hugo — on the Sunset Strip.
Brett admits he wonders what his son's life might have been like if he had not burned quite so bright. If he had grown old.
But Eustachy said that 34 years, as measured by us, is relative.
For Vroman, moving as he did, 34 years was many of our lifetimes.