Jimmy Butler may just be the most fascinating character in American sports today. The Miami Heat guard is at the highest echelon of his craft, a six-time All-Star and one of the NBA’s best players, whose ability to dominate in the biggest moments has earned him comparisons to fellow Chicago Bulls alum Michael Jordan. But what truly sets Butler apart from his peers is the fact that his athletic success, including two NBA finals appearances in the last four years, may be the least interesting thing about him. He embodies “containing multitudes”, and on a Friday morning in December, over a cappuccino, Jimmy Butler doesn’t want to talk about basketball.
Butler, for starters, wants to talk about coffee. He lights up immediately when I bring up his three-year-old coffee company BIGFACE and, while listening to him excitedly recount “origin trips” he’s taken to places like Colombia and Peru – “I wanted to learn what it really takes to make coffee, I’m talking from the ground up” – it’s easy to forget the 34-year-old is one of the biggest names in professional basketball. He’s eager to give recommendations for favorite coffee shops – he name-checks Forin Cafe in Philadelphia, Mammoth Espresso in New Orleans and Hex Coffee in Charlotte among his favorite to visit – and exhibits genuine exuberance when talking about BIGFACE, which was first conceived in the NBA’s Disney World bubble during the coronavirus pandemic when Butler began charging his fellow players $20 a cup for the coffee he brewed in his hotel room.
BIGFACE will soon evolve from just a bean purveyor – and Van Leeuwen Ice Cream collaborator – to opening its first brick and mortar shop in Butler’s home of Miami this spring, and he speaks with passion about his vision for what the space could become. He says he wants it to have “something for everybody – all the different types of coffee, all the different ways coffee can be made.” But more importantly, he imagines it becoming a space for community, somewhere people can gather. He pictures a space where he can be Jimmy Butler the person, not Jimmy Butler the NBA player.
“I want to be able to talk about kids – my kids, your kids. I want to be able to talk about, ‘Man, have you ever been on vacation here? Oh my goodness, I had the best steak of my life,’ you know what I mean?” he says. “I want to be able to talk about any and everything over coffee with people that I’ve never met before, that would probably be really great friends if we just sit down and figure out what we have in common outside of basketball.”
Of course, when you’re Jimmy Butler, your pals aren’t all just random coffee shop patrons. Over the last few years, Butler has developed a friendship with one of his personal heroes, Brazilian soccer supernova Neymar. The two have bonded over more than just their shared athletic mastery, connecting over things like fatherhood, a role Butler stepped into for the first time a few years ago.
“I see him as a brother, you know what I mean?” Butler says. “And I’ll go support, he knows this. I’ll fly anywhere to go watch my brother play. But whenever I do get there, we’re always just kicking it, talking about life, FaceTiming each other’s kids. It’s a real family vibe around him, and around all the people that I’m around.” Butler clearly admires this about Neymar, speaking with reverence when he describes the footballer’s relationship with his children. “He’s an incredible dad. He does so much for them, and he’s always around them, teaching them everything about life, about whatever they want to put their mind to. Man, it’s incredible to watch. And I learn from it.”
I ask him if it’s been a bit of a trip having a hero become a confidant. “Yes, I’m still a massive fan. And yes, I still ask him for tips – [I’ll say] ‘I just want one one-thousandth of the talent and skill that you have,’” he says. “But I’m telling you, it’s just laughing, messing around, competing in everything, just some really good people.” And Butler is sure to cheekily give Neymar his athletic flowers, too. “He’s [obviously] a great footballer. He’s actually pretty good at basketball, too. Actually, now that I think about it, that little motherfucker is good at almost everything.”
In what could be reasonably interpreted as Butler’s own personal quest to be “good at almost everything”, the avid country music fan – he’s from Tomball, Texas, a small town on the outskirts of the Houston metropolitan area – is adding “musical artist” to his rapidly growing resume. He’s been quietly working on his own country album for over a year, he says, and while he’s already amassed about 60 (!) songs for the project, he aims to have recorded around 200 to choose from when all is said and done.
When he talks about his motivation for getting into music, he says he wants to “humble” himself. “There’s so many people out there, and I’m one of them, that are like, ‘Man, I can do that,’ and you really don’t know how difficult it is to make a No 1 song, how difficult it is to have all these songs on the back burner. And you got to pick the right ones. And it’s fun, and I do love it, but my goodness, it’s difficult. It’s stressful – it’s completely different from basketball. I’m not saying basketball’s easy either, but just for people to be able to think they can just go do this or that – it’s like, man, look. Humble yourself. It is incredibly fun, I’ve had a blast while doing it. But I will tell you that it’s not easy.”
He’s unlikely to sing on the album though, as he sees himself in more of a songwriter/producer role (“I’m like the DJ Khaled of this thing,” he deadpans). Butler genuinely admires Khaled’s skill as a curator, telling me, “He’s a crazy talented individual. To bring all these artists together and to have them be able to maintain the egos and be like, ‘Yo, look, this is what we’re trying to get done here,’ he’s mastered it. I freaking love DJ Khaled. ‘We are the best,’ as he would say.”
Butler’s charisma comes with a warmth that makes one wonder why he’s cultivated a reputation as something of an anti-hero, although his fierce competitiveness on the court has no doubt contributed. But upon meeting him it’s clear that his directness and no-nonsense demeanor is more about giving himself, and by proxy, everyone else, permission to exist authentically.
Perhaps no better example of this exists than Butler’s now-infamous trolls of NBA media day over the last two years. Media day, essentially, serves as picture day for the high school yearbook that is NBA television graphics, and Butler decided to have some fun with the outing by showing up for his 2022-23 photos in long dreadlocks. Then, this past October, he arrived in full emo cosplay, sparking a flurry of internet memes. “I grew up in a small town outside of Houston, Texas, so I’ve listened to all types of music my entire life,” Butler says when I ask him about his unlikely emo detour. He says his kids’ nanny is, incidentally, also a big emo fan – especially of My Chemical Romance – so it’s often on the speakers in his house.
Butler agrees that his media day antics are, at their core, an example of showing people they can be themselves. “I love to be myself, I do. And I love to support other people, I do. I love to make people laugh, I love to make people smile. I’m not afraid to make myself look dumb or laugh at myself,” he says. “One of my biggest things is just to continually try and make people so comfortable in their own skin that they’ll unapologetically always be them. And [the media day looks were] just one step closer to that.” Butler also admits that he likes that people now expect the unexpected from him. “Nobody ever knows what’s going on in my life,” he says. “So it’s good to keep people guessing.”
“Keeping people guessing” is a succinct summary of the brand Butler has cultivated. Maybe he’ll have a No 1 hit, maybe he’ll finally add that Larry O’Brien Trophy to his Olympic gold medal. Maybe he’ll reprise his role as a US Open ballboy. At this juncture, no new addition to his resume would be all that surprising, and for Jimmy Butler, that’s the point.
