It's been a long road for Shabazz Napier as he prepares for Thursday night's 2014 National Basketball Association (NBA) Draft, but one that has made him not only a better man, but also a better person.

Napier burst onto the national scene last spring when he led the UConn Huskies to the NCAA men's basketball championship. A blue-chip prospect with clutch shooting and terrific on-ball defending skills, Napier could become one of the top-drafted players in the next generation of NBA stars Thursday when the NBA Draft takes place at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

But hundreds of miles away, amid Maine's scenic green wilderness, one influential figure from Napier's past remembered how the young man getting ready to shine on basketball's brightest stage started as a young boy filled with promise and untapped potential.

Born and raised in Roxbury's Mission Hill section of Boston, Napier is the youngest of three children. His single mother -- Carmen Velasquez, of Puerto Rico -- worked hard to keep the dangerous elements surrounding them from affecting her children's future, including enrolling him in the local YMCA "No Books No Ball" program.

While Napier was mostly a solid student, the basketball star transferred from Charlestown High School to Lawrence Academy in Groton, Massachusetts, where he could focus on his education as much as he focused on improving his basketball.

"I think a change of environment was good for him," former Lawrence coach Kevin Wiercinski told LatinPost.com. "He was a good student, but he needed to focus on books. The basketball part would have taken care of itself because he was so talented. But he needed to understand that he could not get to where he wanted to go without focusing on school. This was a good environment for him."

At Lawrence, Napier's burgeoning leadership skills continued to grow on and off the court. That impressed Wiercinski as he watched the boy grow into a man.

"It comes from within, and he's a natural, no two ways about it," Wiercinski said. "He was like most players [in] that he wanted ... his points and looked at his stats, but one day it just clicked for him that the decisions he makes have effects on others. It showed on the court, as well as outside."

Napier fielded offers from several schools, including UMass, Providence College and Rhode Island University, but went to the University of Connecticut, where he averaged 7.8 points, 3.0 assists and 1.8 steals per game on his way to winning a NCAA men's baskteball title under Jim Calhoun in 2011, beating Butler University 53-41 and hitting key free throws in the waning minutes of the Final Four semifinal against the University of Kentucky.

But Napier would not return to the tournament the following year, when UConn was hit with NCAA sanctions after the school was found guilty of "improper recruiting inducements, impermissible phone calls and text messages to prospective student-athletes, failure to monitor and promote an atmosphere for compliance by the head coach, failure to monitor by the university," unethical conduct and some secondary violations.

Napier easily could have left for the NBA while UConn was serving its suspension, but instead, he stuck around, improving his skills while helping the younger members of the team. Napier's perseverance paid off with another NCAA title, this time under coach Kevin Ollie in his senior year, when the team defeated the University of Florida 60-54 in the championship game.

Wiercinski believes that between Napier's rough childhood, the adjustments he made as a student and athlete at Lawrence, his determination to not let the UConn program down when he could have walked away, and his championship pedigree, he is ready for the next level, regardless of the pitfalls he may face.

"All the pressure's on him. He's going to be able to handle it. Now, it's not going to be without its challenges," Wiercinski said. "Every day, part of the problem was that type of travel. The money will certainly be different, and that celebrity lifestyle. But at the end of the day, in this point and time, I feel that Shabazz, considering where he has been, his time in UConn, where he comes from, his background, he's going to have peaks and valleys, trials and tribulations, but GMs won't have to worry about him."