Jimmy Butler got some help back in 2013 that helped him transform from a defensive minded player to a two-way star leading the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals.
Chicago Bulls‘ fans may remember coming into the 2013 NBA season that Jimmy Butler was far from a household NBA name. Butler was entering his second year with the Bulls, a late first-round pick who had averaged only 8 mpg and 2.6 ppg in his largely nondescript rookie season. There was no “Butler buzz'” heading into his second year on West Madison.
Tom Thibodeau’s Bulls were hopeful Butler could become an impact player on the defensive end of the court. Butler was willing to do whatever it took to get on the court and Thibs loved himself some hard-nosed defense.
The Bulls were also trying to figure out how to play without Derrick Rose, who was out for the season after tearing his ACL in the 2012 playoffs. Nate Robinson, now a budding media star, had been signed as a free agent to back-up Kirk Hinrich to mitigate the Rose-less Bulls.
Robinson ended up helping the Bulls beat Brooklyn Nets in the first round of the playoffs, scoring 23 points in the fourth quarter of Game 4, including 12 straight with the Bulls down 109-95 with 2:53 left. It was one of the greatest performances in Bulls history in the playoffs.
Robinson’s biggest impact was not his performance on the court, but rather his mentorship of Butler, who was locked in on being a defensive player at the time, unaware of his ability to impact the game on both ends of the court. Robinson was a workout fiend and how found a gym near his apartment in Skokie that he frequented.
“When I was on the Bulls I used to work out a lot even after practice I would go to this nearby gym that was by my apartment,” Robinson told Da Windy City podcast. “I remember one day I was shooting and Jimmy Butler called me and he was like ‘Nate what you doing’ and I was like ‘I’m about to go to the gym’.
“He was like, ‘Are you about to go to the facility?’ and I was like, ‘Nah I got a gym right by my house’. And he was like, ‘Aw man do you mind if I come’? And I was like, ‘Of course you can come pull up’. So me and Jimmy used to always go to this gym right by my house. We would go to this gym and shoot and I would just work on my game, work on things that I could work on without the coaches saying don’t do this, don’t do that.”
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It was during those after-practice workouts that Butler focused on expanding his game, competing against Robinson, who was ahead of the curve in assessing Butler’s talents and did his best to open up all the possibilities to Butler during these extra hours on the court.
“I told him, bro you are a defensive guy, but you’re just as good as anyone on this team offensively I’ve seen it,” Robinson said. “You gotta let it blossom, you gotta show the world. I told him in the playoffs we are going to need you to score too, not just guard all the guys like LeBron (James) or D-Wade (Dwyane Wade) and all the tough assignments. We need you to go back at em on the offensive end as well.”
