Netflix series reveals pain and grief that Heat’s Jimmy Butler endured off court last season

Miami Heat star Jimmy Butler has endured a lot of pain off the basketball court over the last 18 months

The Wednesday release of Netflix’s NBA series “Starting 5” offered a glimpse at what Butler has dealt with away from basketball since the 2023 playoffs. It was a personal issue that eventually forced him to take a leave of absence in February last season.

As revealed on Episodes 5 and 6 of the 10-part Netflix series, Butler’s father, Jimmy Butler Jr., died on Feb. 8 because of a terminal illness.

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“When you lose somebody who’s that dear to you and that’s taught you so much, that has seen you grow from a kid to a young adult to a star to the man that I am today as a father and then all of a sudden he’s not there anymore, I didn’t know what to do,” Butler said during Episode 5 of the Netflix series. “No amount of money in the world could bring him back. Basketball, no matter how much I played it, it couldn’t fix that.”

Following the death of his father, the Heat granted Butler a leave of absence for what was then explained to be because of the death of a family member. He went on to miss the Heat’s final three games prior to the mid-February All-Star break before returning to play in the team’s first game after the break.

“Right after All-Star break, they really need me to be a lot better,” Butler said during Episode 6 of “Starting 5” as he prepared to rejoin the Heat after that leave of absence. “I want to always answer to that call. But I couldn’t care less about basketball right now. I don’t care. Yeah, I work out. Yes, I train because I love to do it and it takes my mind off of my dad. From that moment, I’m lost in the game, in the art, in getting better. But as soon as that ball is done bouncing and I’m back home, it will all settle in.”

Jimmy Jr. was diagnosed with the health issue during the Heat’s 2023 playoff run to the NBA Finals between the Heat’s second-round series against the New York Knicks and its Eastern Conference finals series against the Boston Celtics.

“Jimmy’s dad didn’t feel great and we needed to get him to go see a doctor,” Butler’s agent Bernie Lee said during Episode 5 of the Netflix series. “He went through some testing.”

The results of that test returned just before Game 7 of the East finals when Butler and the Heat were preparing to play one of the biggest games in franchise history at TD Garden in Boston. The Heat, once up 3-0 over the Celtics in that East finals, was trying to avoid becoming the first NBA team ever to give up a 3-0 lead in a best-of-7 playoff series.

“Before the game was supposed to start, that doctor called me and said they got the results back from the test and that his father, his health issue was going to be terminal,” Lee recalled during Episode 5. “I thought to myself, do I wait until after the game to tell him this? Or if it was me, I’d want to know. I want to know in that moment. I couldn’t live with not telling him that the second I knew it. We walked into a shower area of the locker room and I just told him. I remember he just looked at me, he thanked me for telling him and he said, ‘I’m going to go do my job and then we’ll figure out the things that have to come next.’”

Butler went on to finish Game 7 with 28 points, seven rebounds, six assists and three steals to win the 2023 East Finals Most Valuable Player honor and help the Heat advance to the 2023 NBA Finals. Before traveling to Denver for the start of that championship series, which the Denver Nuggets won 4-1, Butler went to spend time with his ailing father.

“I get on the plane, I fly to spend some time with my dad,” Butler recalled during the Netflix series. “He’s telling me every aspect of the game that went on, what happened from his point of view. I hand him the [East finals MVP] trophy, it gave him a different type of energy of like, ‘Yo, we’re going to beat this.’”

Butler’s father lived with him in Miami while battling the illness.

“It sucks to hurt,” a visibly emotional Butler said during the “Starting 5” series. “It sucks to lose people. They expect you to be superhuman, which is a thing in itself. But I’m very much human and I’m hurting right now as we speak and I hate talking about it. I hate it. But here we are.”

One of Butler’s final memories with his father came the day before he died.

With Jimmy Jr. in the hospital on the day the Heat hosted the San Antonio Spurs on Feb. 7, Butler went to visit his father that afternoon.

“We were here in the hospital during the day and Jimmy had a conversation with the hospital staff people just to make sure that the TV in the room that his father was in worked,” Lee said during the Netflix series that followed Butler, LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers, Anthony Edwards of the Minnesota Timberwolves, Jayson Tatum of the Boston Celtics and Domantas Sabonis of the Sacramento Kings throughout last season. “I remember him actively making the point to say to his father, ‘Hey, during the game tonight, I got it set up so I know you’ll be able to watch it.’”

Butler recorded the 19th triple-double of his NBA career (including the playoffs) during that Feb. 7 game, finishing with 17 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists to lead the Heat to a 116-104 home win over the Spurs.

“The game ended and he took the shoes that he had and he wrote the date of the game on the shoes,” Lee said during Episode 5 of the series. “He took those shoes and he took them to the hospital to give them to his father.”

With the Heat then having three days off before its next game on Feb. 11 against the Celtics at Kaseya Center, Butler was set to travel to attend the wedding of one of his close friends during that in-season break.

“I see my dad on the hospital bed. I tell my dad that I love him,” Butler said during the Netflix show. “The doctor comes in and I’m like, ‘Hey doc, I got to go see my brother get married. Will he still be here, will he still be alive whenever I get back?’ The doc was like, ‘I don’t know.’ I was like, ‘All right, well I got to go. But please, please, please I need my dad here whenever I get back.”

As Butler’s plane was preparing to land at the site of his friend’s wedding, he received a text from Lee.

“I get a text from my agent that asks me if I landed yet,” Butler said during the “Starting 5” series. “Nobody ever texts me when I’m in the air to ask if I’ve landed yet. So that’s when I knew that my dad had passed, my dad had passed on Feb. 8 at 1:04 a.m. or something like that. So it was crazy that triple-double was the last game that my dad was alive.”

The rest of last season was a struggle for Butler, as he mourned the death of his father. Butler eventually sprained the MCL in his right knee during the play-in tournament and was forced to miss the Heat’s entire first-round playoff series that the Celtics won last season.

“I don’t think you really understand until you understand that athletes are human, too,” Butler said during the Netflix show. “That we hurt and we cry and we grieve and we’re angry. Something is going on in our life and you can’t see it just like we don’t understand what’s going on in your life either. But that doesn’t make us a bad person for being human.”

Butler, 35, returns this season with a fresh perspective on life after that turbulent time.

Butler, who can become a free agent next summer with a $52.4 million player option in his contract for next season, is motivated by the pain he lived through.

“As tired as I am, I still know why I want to win now,” Butler said during the “Starting 5” series. “Because I want my dad to be able to say that I was a champion, that I was the best.”

For the first time in two years, Butler played in a preseason game on Tuesday. He finished the Heat’s preseason opener with 11 points on 3-of-6 shooting from the field, 1-of-2 shooting on threes and 4-of-5 shooting from the foul line, three rebounds, two assists, one steal and one block in 15 minutes during Tuesday’s 111-108 loss to the Hornets in Charlotte, N.C.

With the Heat postponing Thursday’s preseason home game against the Atlanta Hawks until next week because of Hurricane Milton, Miami’s next preseason contest comes on Sunday against the New Orleans Pelicans at Kaseya Center.

“Now more than ever, I really don’t take anything for granted because you never know when they will not be here anymore,” Butler said during the Netflix show. “My dad was special. He’s not here, but I know he’s always going to be here. I know my pops is proud, man.

“Knowing that my dad was proud of me, that was a large reason I wanted to become who I am today — the fatherhood aspect of it. I really, really, really enjoy being a dad [to my two children]. That’s where his legacy is going to live on. I’m going to love my children like he loved me and I’m going to be there and I’m going to support them. So I’m going to be the best dad.”