this man made it to the nba even though he was homeless how could someone go from living on the street to signing hundred million dollar deals and becoming one of the nba's biggest stars well this is the story of jimmy butler jimmy's the last person you'd expect to have been homeless because he was just an innocent kid growing up in one of texas richest cities but at just 13 years old his life came crashing down out of nowhere jimmy's dad abandoned his family with no explanation and since jimmy looked just like the father that betrayed
the family jimmy's mother just couldn't stand looking at his face so eventually she snapped at jimmy and said i don't like the way you look you gotta go and kicked him to the streets my mom kicked me out of my house to tell the truth i bounced in and out of guys houses in high school now you'd think a teenager forced to figure out life for himself would be hard enough but jimmy's obstacles toward nba stardom were about to get even harder see any day he couldn't crash at his friend's house he'd just roam the
streets and being homeless in the texas heat would be brutal for anybody but especially jimmy and living like that forced them to make a life-changing decision so i was always a big football fan you know being from texas football was big i think basketball made me third but then i wasn't a fan of the sun wasn't a fan of the heat plus i was tiny everybody else started growing i was like i don't want to get crushed i'm gonna move inside to the ac shoot at the orange rim at the time jimmy didn't realize just
how significant switching sports would become but he wasted no time signing up for basketball at tomball high school where he vowed to become a star athlete and during his senior year jimmy began his basketball career which led him to making his new best friend jordan leslie but little did jimmy know they were about to become family i mean i was always like man you could stay stay tonight my mom won't care and then i'd just be like oh just one more night and just kind of develops into a week and then a month jimmy finally
found himself a permanent home but more importantly he felt love and support jimmy knew this family took a risk bringing a stranger into their lives so he couldn't let them down and for the first time in jimmy's life he had hope his basketball days were only beginning and yet he instantly set a goal most kids could only dream of making the nba but jimmy was determined and that year the journey started off strong cause he committed to playing basketball for tyler junior college i remember the first time walking down this bad baby i know i
ended the game with 33 points and with that 33 points i was asking myself is this real can i really score 33 points on a nightly basis and then the next time i came out 35 points so um i knew that i belonged here uh this is where it started for me now i don't know about you but dropping 30 points a night sounds good to me but see jimmy was only dominating players in junior college and doing things at that level meant little to nothing jimmy knew if he wanted to accomplish his nba dreams
he had to step up his game and be recruited to a top-ranked university but right then and there jimmy realized his goals were even harder than he imagined because jimmy already had a star teammate who was attracting scouts for himself so with jimmy knowing he had to compete with his own teammate for the spotlight he began doubting he'd ever go pro and i was like man can i really compete with the best of these guys you know if you pass the ball you might not get the ball like everybody trying to get to the next
level jimmy knew that with so much competition on the team he already couldn't afford making a single mistake especially since his star teammate who was already committed to marquette university was bringing in attention from coaches and jimmy knew marquette's assistant coach buzz williams always showed up so jimmy was determined to make him realize they were choosing the wrong guy buzz came in he was an assistant at marquette under korean at the time and he comes up to me you know what if i ever had a head coaching job like you would be a player that
i would want to come you to come play for me now even though buzz wanted jimmy to come to marquette everything had to fall into place and one day out of nowhere jimmy's phone rang i'm the first person he calls like he would always he always had told me the truth and all of this so you know without even visiting i went to marquette it was official jimmy accomplished his first goal and was now heading to the university of marquette but this was just a small step in the right direction jimmy knew the competition here
was fierce the stakes were higher and if he wanted to elevate to the next level he couldn't be average but even though jimmy wanted to make the nba so did all of his new teammates and the guy starting in front of him was already a star player on the nba's radar which led jimmy to the biggest obstacle of his life jimmy panicked he thought he would never get the playing time to prove himself and well he had to think fast at the time marquette's starting guard was wesley matthews and considering wesley was an nba prospect
jimmy felt there was no way he could be better than wesley and began feeling his nba dream slipping away but see jimmy wasn't recruited to marquette for no reason coach buzz knew the potential jimmy had and forced him to work harder than all of his teammates at times jimmy was forced to show up for extra drills at 5 30 in the morning the workouts jimmy pushed through were inhumane but secretly this was all a part of coach buzz's master plan to get jimmy to the big league he knew jimmy's story and his goal of making
the nba so buzz wanted to be the reason he got there but ironically all that extra work nearly made jimmy quit basketball like i was always like i want to come home i want to transfer like because he was so hard on me like i was so far away from home you know homesick i'm still a kid he wanted to go home because i was extremely difficult in coaching him because i thought that he could evolve into being a guy towards the end of the year that could help us jimmy didn't know it yet but
being pushed that hard was about to be his biggest blessing behind the scenes he anxiously waited for an opportunity but at the same time wesley was out there dominating having the best season of his college career so cuz wesley was on the rise every single day jimmy was pushed to take his game to a whole new level until later that year wesley made his way into the nba leaving marquette with an open starting spot everybody at marquette knew jimmy was doing everything he could to become their next leader and now they blast him with the
opportunity but even though his hard work finally paid off deep down jimmy wasn't confident he could be the next wesley matthews at the time not a single nba team even acknowledged jimmy so he only had one year to raise his draft stock otherwise his dream would be over and right on cue that's when wesley came back around and gave jimmy some life-changing advice wesley matthews came back i was like yo you can play in the league i was like word and that's when i really started to take basketball for real for real maybe i can
be a pro at the highest level not europe pro nothing's wrong with that but like the nba like that's where you want to be at that's the best of the best right after jimmy was convinced he could make the nba he knew it was now or never that season he came out with a chip on his shoulder hitting game-winning shots and putting up over 15 points a night jimmy even carried marquette during march madness winning back-to-back games but still no matter what he accomplished his goal was to go pro so after his 2011 season jimmy
took a leap of faith and declared for the nba draft but that's when things got scary because everybody was finally gonna see if jimmy's basketball career was over or just beginning good evening and welcome to nba drafts presented by state farm let's get ready to welcome them to the nba family the best of the best were here all the country's top players from high school and college hoped their dreams were about to come true so jimmy knew he had competition but he still had faith that eventually his name would be called and one by one
the picks came in the cleveland cavaliers select kyrie irving the charlotte bobcats select kemba walker the golden state warriors select clay thompson the indiana pacers select kawhi leonard as teams made their selections jimmy's name was never called most teams saw him as a huge liability after all he wasn't a freak athlete he wasn't fast and he didn't throw down crazy highlights so teams felt drafting him for what he could become was too risky nobody was willing to place that bad well nobody until with the 30th pick in the 2011 draft the chicago bulls select jimmy
butler from marquette university i instantly first got into tears with my mom because all the people that tell me that i wouldn't amount to anything that i wouldn't get my degree i wouldn't go to college i couldn't be an mba player but more than anything it was i proved myself right i could care less about proving them wrong now with jimmy officially becoming an nba player he realized just making the league actually wasn't the dream after all it was just a step towards an even bigger goal jimmy understood that going from homeless to a professional
athlete was a blessing so now being in a position to accomplish greatness and having the power to motivate millions of people he vowed to give basketball as everything and make it known to the entire world that anything is possible [Music] it's not enough for jimmy butler to be good it's not enough for him to be an all-star jimmy butler has greatness written all over him he has got that dog in him trust me he is clutch closer on defense and offense he's as tough as they come [Music] you
