Boston Celtics forward Jae Crowder's career arc has been both admirable and bizarre to watch unfold. The 26-year-old out of Marquette spent two years showing flashes in limited minutes for Dallas, but looked very much like an incomplete forward. A decent-but-not great shooter with athleticism and a high motor, Crowder looked like he might be an impact player in the right situation but also looked like just a role player for the Mavericks.

Then he was traded to Boston last year, and his career took off. Crowder emerged as a near-All-Star, a versatile slasher who shot 34 percent from the arc and played top-level defense while averaging 14.2 points and 5.1 rebounds per game. Crowder's value skyrocketed to the point where several reports indicated that the hold-up in potential Celtics trades for Kevin Love or Jimmy Butler was the value that GM Danny Ainge has put on Crowder.

Still, the Celtics are looking to build a championship roster. After adding Al Horford, the Celtics have to think that they're within striking distance of building a new "Big 3" to bring them back to championship relevance.

CSN New England ran a slideshow Tuesday of five players the Celtics "could" look to target in free agency in 2017. Of the five players (Kevin Durant, Blake Griffin, Rudy Gay, Danilo Gallinari, Gordon Hayward), four play small forward, Crowder's position. When Crowder saw the post from CSN, he had a reaction on Twitter.

So that's pretty funny. The issue of course is that Crowder still doesn't have the skillset to be a No. 1 or No. 2 scoring threat. This will always be the limitation of defense-first players. Defense is way more of a skill than it's made out to be, but effort and concentration are still the building blocks of it, rather than skill and talent on the offensive side. You can find more defenders who can't score than you can top level, efficient scorers (though two of the names on that list are not efficient scorers anyway).

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Jae Crowder can't believe the Celtics would want to upgrade on him USATSI

Still, Crowder doesn't have any reason to be concerned. Ainge is clearly committed to him and Crowder's deal, which pays him less than $8 million annually over the next four seasons, he's too valuable from a cost-efficiency standpoint to move unless it was in a no-brainer trade. It's pretty cool to see Crowder taking that level of professional pride, though.