The Path: Jimmy Butler of the Chicago Bulls

In 2011, the Bulls selected Jimmy Butler with the 30th pick in the NBA draft. Butler has become a key role player this year for the Bulls and now in the playoff series against the Heat as drawn the tough defensive assignment of guarding LeBron James. But that's does even come close to what Butler had to go through at a young age.

When Jimmy Butler was 13 years ago, his mother kicked with out of the house not knowing why Butler moved from house to house staying with friends for a while just trying to make it. 

He was going into his senior year at Tomball High School, near Houston, when freshman, Jordan Leslie, challenged him to a three-point contest at the outdoor basketball court down the street from the Lambert home. They became friends and that was the start of something special . 

It eventually became clear to Jordan that Butler had no permanent place to live, that his was an existence of sleeping on couches and accepting meals whenever they were offered just trying survive. Jordan invited him to stay the night at his home. There already were two parents and seven children in his household. One more could hurt right? 

Those two parents were Michael Lambert, who had his own construction business and three kids from a previous marriage. Then there was Michelle Lambert was an engineer tech for a gas and oil company and also had three kid from a previous marriage. 

‘‘He would come over and sleep here a couple nights,’’ Mrs. Lambert said. ‘‘Then it got a little bit more and a little bit more. Finally, we were like, ‘Come on, Jordan, it’s a school night, you can’t have someone spending the night with you all the time.’ We told him no more than two nights together.

‘‘On the third night, I said, ‘Jordan, it’s the third night, Jimmy’s still here, what’s going on?’ One of my other kids said, ‘Oh, Jimmy’s spending the night with me tonight.’ That’s when I realized they had beat us. We were like, ‘You little sneaky people.’ ’’

The Lamberts decided the implications of not taking in Butler were greater. ‘‘The kids just loved him immediately,’’ Mrs. Lambert said. ‘‘He became part of our lives immediately.’’

Butler was a talented basketball player very versatile on the court but off the court that's was a different story.

‘‘For a long time, he was very shy,’’ Mrs. Lambert said. ‘‘He wouldn’t come downstairs and eat. He would have the kids come bring him food. I think he thought if we saw him a lot that we’d realize he was there and try to make him leave or something. So he was very, very low-profile.’’

‘‘I had to tell Jimmy many times, ‘This is not a conditional love. This is forever. We will argue, and I might not agree with you, but there is nothing in this world that you could do that I’m turning my back on you,’ ’’ Lambert said. ‘‘I still have to tell him that a lot. He’s very conditioned that if someone gets mad at him, they’re gone.

‘‘Sometimes, he pushes people away. He does not get close to many people at all. He’s very, very guarded. Extremely guarded.’’

In Marquette’s media guide, his parents are listed as Londa and Jimmy Butler. His father hasn’t been in his life since he was an infant.

There was a reason he kept his background a secret.

‘‘I want to be treated like a normal person with a normal family,’’ Bulter said. ‘‘It might not look like that, but I want it to feel like that. I don’t look at it as anything else than my family, as simple as that.’’

He was a very good player in high school but didn’t play much AAU ball, and as we all know the AAU is  lifeline of college recruiting, because he often couldn’t get a ride to games or practices.

Brad Ball, Butler’s high school basketball coach , knew there were difficulties in his star’s personal life but didn’t know the full extent. With more of the details emerging now, he can see Butler was desperate for some kind of structure.

“Of all the kids I ever coached, no kid has ever spent more time in the gym or watched more game film with me than Jimmy Butler,’’ Ball said. ‘‘He’d be there Saturday mornings before practice, and he’d constantly call me about getting in the gym.

‘‘You look back on it, and maybe that was part of the reason why he spent so much time with me.’’

After one year at community college, Butler signed Marquette and one of the toughest coaches in college basketball Buzz Williams.

‘‘He never had a man get on him,’’ Mrs. Lambert said. ‘‘Buzz is a tough coach. He’s a great coach. But that was hard for Jimmy to deal with. He never had all that discipline. He’d call me: ‘Mommy, I’m coming home. I shouldn’t have gone here. I hate it.’ He had to sit on the bench his sophomore year. There were many phone calls.

‘‘I said, ‘No, you’re going to suck this up. You’re going to be a man, and you’re going to go out there and you’re going to do what you need to. ’’


Bulter manned up and averaged 15 points game his junior and senior years at Marquette but, mostly important, he played defense like a bull and that's what caught Bull's coach Tom Thibodeau's attention.

When Butler went home for the summer from Marquette he would get up at 6 a.m. to see his brother and sister play soccer games.

‘‘That’s my family,’’ Bulter said. ‘‘I support them just like they support me. If I had a game at 4:45 a.m., they’d be there to watch me play. I don’t get much of a chance to see them play because I’m always busy with basketball. When I get a chance to see them, I don’t care if I have to stay up all night to watch them play."


‘‘I’ve lived it: When you support somebody, they can do incredible things.’’

Mrs. Lambert is always worrying about Jimmy and talks to him about living life a certain way.

‘‘He is very, very sweet, and he’s very, very naïve,’’ she said. ‘‘I tell him daily, ‘Remember that these people coming out of the woodwork weren’t there for you when you needed them. You be polite, you be nice, but don’t give in to these people with feel-sorry stories.’ ’’

‘I don’t want the bad images,’’ she said. ‘‘I don’t want to see him on the news and have all these baby mommas. I don’t want the tattoos up and down his arms and his neck and his face. I say, ‘Look respectful because this little deal is going to last a couple years, and then the real world starts.’’

As for the past?

‘To me, the early part of his life doesn’t exist,’’ Mrs. Lambert said. ‘‘I mean, it does exist, but I just think of him as mine and that he’s been with us forever.’’

Until this day Bulter doesn't know why his biological mother kicked him out of the house but as painful and it was it helped mold and shape just not the basketball player but the man Jimmy Buter has became today.

‘‘That was the fuel to my fire,’’ he said. ‘‘It gave me the perseverance to push through anything.’’

Bulter has pushed his way to the NBA and playing for the Chicago Bulls.

This isn't the The Blind Side just a another bright side of sports.

(Jimmy Butler and Michelle Lambert)