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Left Alone, Jimmy Butler Has Found NBA Stardom One New Family Member at a Time

By now, many are familiar with the story of how Jimmy Butler grew up: how his mom kicked him out of their home in bedraggled Tomball, Texas, at age 13 before he was finally taken in by a surrogate family in high school.

Jimmy Butler hates that story. Not just because it describes him as once homeless, a tag that he now says was blown “out of proportion, times one thousand. I was not living under a bridge. That’s homeless. Or standing on the corner asking for change. That’s not what it was. I’m not going to say it was the easiest of times, don’t get me wrong, but I had a home. Or homes.”

Nor is it because he’s still haunted by his childhood and would rather not reflect on where it took place. He lives, after all, in Houston during the offseason; Tomball is on the outskirts. “Me and my family are on great terms now,” he says of his biological mother, whom he spent time with in Tomball last summer. “I’m good. I’m OK.”

Nor is it because he doesn’t appreciate the Lamberts, the blended family with seven kids that parented him through high school after he couch-surfed for a time. “I had people,” he says. “I wouldn’t change that for the world. I love Tomball for that.”

He hates that story because he doesn’t believe what happened in Tomball shaped him into an NBA All-Star shooting guard for the Chicago Bulls, and someone sure to be one of the most attractive restricted free agents on the market this summer.

That is how the old Jimmy would’ve described himself, anyway, because the old Jimmy was all about personal accolades. Today’s Jimmy would rather talk big picture, about where he is in his journey and who has helped get him there.

“I would call it the step before a new beginning,” the new Jimmy says. “I’m not going to say this is the beginning. This is the step right before.”

Jimmy Butler (right) became Buzz Williams’ project at Marquette, bearing the brunt of the hardest practice drills and often the toughest defensive game assignments. Chris Trotman/Getty Images
As gut-wrenching as it is to imagine a kid rejected by his family and having to fend for himself, Butler believes moving away from his hometown—first to junior college, then to Marquette University and finally to Chicago—was infinitely tougher. While his mom told him he wasn’t wanted, the coaches and everyone else who loved basketball in Tomball always had, which helped fill the void. Butler filled some of it himself, boasting that he could drop 40 on anyone in the country.

No one picked up the chorus. Two hundred miles up the road at Tyler Junior College, no one knew him or seemed to think much of his game. Later, at Marquette, he received the same empty reception. Butler was a portrait of teenage bravado, a kid who didn’t have anything else to buttress his self worth.

“He was ranked 73rd in the state of Texas coming out of high school,” says Virginia Tech head coach Buzz Williams, who coached Butler at Marquette. “Not in the country, in the state. No. 72 went to the Citadel. No. 74 went to a Division II school. He was an afterthought in every possible way. He didn’t go to play at a junior college because a Division I program sent him there to prepare him. He went because he didn’t have any other options.”

He wound up at Marquette only because Williams scouted one of his Tyler teammates, Joseph Fulce. Williams took over the program for Tom Crean, who left to coach Indiana, a week before the spring signing period, which left the Golden Eagles scrambling to fill out their roster. Fulce suggested they bring in Butler.

There were no recruiting trips or sit-down pitches made in anyone’s living room, and there certainly was no press conference when Butler arrived on campus—without a winter coat or any other cold-weather clothing—for the first day of school.

Williams made Butler his first recruit after taking over the Marquette program in 2008. Chris Trotman/Getty Images
Marquette’s offer was the only one Jimmy received. He was in the car when he showed it to Tyler assistant coach Scott Monarch, who understood the golden ticket Jimmy had been given. Monarch immediately made Butler sign it, drove to the nearest McDonald’s and asked to use their fax machine.

Butler, meanwhile, sat in the car outside the McDonald’s, thinking his greatest wish had come true. “I was going to be able to go to college and get a degree,” he says. “There was my dream. That was my goal.”

Butler was Williams’ first signee as head coach, and the two had a lot in common at that point in their lives. Like Butler, Williams hailed from a small Texas town called Van Alstyne in the northeast part of the state. After more than a decade as an assistant, Williams served a short tenure as the head coach at the University of New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina left the school unable to run a Division I program. So he returned to the assistant-coaching ranks after one year, joining Crean’s staff at Marquette.

Williams, while asking that this story focus on Butler, joked that he was just “trying to delay my inevitable return to hauling hay.” Inside the joke is the reality of being from a small town and the fear of falling short in the bigger, wider world. Butler harbored that same fear and Williams knew it.

“There was symmetry between where he was as a player and where I was as a coach,” Williams says now. “I coached him in a manner that bordered on inhumane. Because of his background, he had no plan B, no escape route. He was willing to do whatever I asked him to do.”

Williams knew Butler was his best athlete, had more potential than he realized and, as a 6’5″—now 6’7″—shooting guard, might be able to take it up a notch. But he routinely told Butler what he couldn’t do, knowing Butler couldn’t resist trying to prove him wrong. Pushing Butler to the extreme also set the standard for everyone else and prompted the veterans and fellow future NBAers such as Wes Matthews and Lazar Hayward to close ranks around Butler. The first year had Jimmy on the verge of going home, but Marquette’s support staff, which included a newly hired Monarch, kept telling him how good he could be.

Hence, the same Butler who once only cared about points became the ultimate utility player. “Buzz would say, ‘You’re not very good’ or ‘You can’t guard this guy,’ and that’s what got me and he knew it,” Butler recalls. “That’s why I will love him to death for the rest of my life because he knew the buttons to press that could get me going. I had to find a way to fit in, to contribute to winning games, to eventually work my way into Buzz not being able to take me off the floor. It wasn’t because I was the best player. It may have been because I played hard every possession or I took a charge or I defended. It was never because I was the best player.”

Butler averaged 12 points per game while shooting 50.8 percent in three years at Marquette. Jim McIsaac/Getty Images
Butler’s role on the floor evolved, but he remained Williams’ standard-bearer for effort. As a senior, Butler had the dubious honor of running solo in sprints, which meant he ran twice as many as his paired-up teammates. Williams held something called boot camp, which consisted of preseason conditioning drills at 5:30 a.m. On the last day of camp, by far the hardest, Williams pulled out their upcoming schedule and assigned sprints based on the difficulty of the opponent.

Playing Seton Hall on the road? Brutal, deserving of a particularly challenging timed sprint. “You make the time or you keep running,” Butler says.

On the last sprint of the last day, Butler hit the far touchline, pivoted and went down as his foot exploded through the bottom of his shoe.

“The shoe came up to, like, mid-calf, still tied,” Butler recalls. “I laid there and said, ‘Damn, I can’t believe I just ran through my shoe, thinking Buzz was going to be like, ‘Yo, you went hard, we’re going to count it.'”

Instead, Williams barked: “Didn’t make it.”

Butler: “Buzz, I just came out of my shoe, what would you like me to do?”

Williams: “Don’t care, do it all over again.”

Butler not only had to get the shoe off, he had to get a fresh one on in the normal rest time before the next sprint started.

“That’s what Buzz taught us,” Butler says. “No matter what happens, finish. Nobody cares. It made me so much stronger, so much better, so much tougher, to where, the ball rolling down the court, there’s no chance you could get it but you’re going to chase that ball down. You’re going to try to get it.”

If you’re wondering how Butler can log the second-most minutes in the NBA last season, jump to No. 1 this year—just a tick under 40 a night—and not only never complain but still blame himself for the Bulls’ defensive lapses, start there. Or how, with the Orlando Magic leading by six with the ball and less than 30 seconds left last weekend, Butler calmly picked off a pass, drew a clear-path foul, made the free throws and helped Chicago eke out a one-point win. The same Magic team Butler played a franchise-record 60 minutes against in a triple-overtime loss in January.

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Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau has taken heat for not paying minute totals much mind, but he’ll never hear it from Butler. “He never complains,” says his agent, Happy Walters.

“He does whatever the team needs,” Thibodeau has said on more than one occasion.

As much as Williams worked on Butler’s game, he also helped the young player with his psyche. Williams saw the anger and resentment still eating Butler up, the emotional anguish wrought by being abandoned (the reasons for which Butler keeps private to this day). They talked through how it’s not up to an individual to judge others.

“There weren’t many two-way conversations that first year,” Williams says. “We spent a lot of time trying to scrape out his hur