Before basketball, the surprising job targeted by Jimmy Butler!

Today and more than ever, Jimmy Butler is a basketball player and maybe even one of the very best players on the planet. However, his future has not always been mapped out and when he was younger, he aimed for a completely different profession as a job…

Currently, Jimmy Butler is in the NBA Finals for the second time in his career and can afford to believe in a championship ring. At the end of a playoff campaign which marks the peak of his career, the Heat winger is more than ever passionate and concerned in his quest. Since he’s been in the league, he has always been categorized as a surly player who gave himself body and soul on the floor.

However, his destiny has never been traced since the former Timberwolves had to go get everything he got on his own. Indeed, he was abandoned by his father at birth and his mother later sent him away from home when he was 13 years old. Jimmy Buckets therefore quickly had to have big ambitions and thus originally aimed to do a completely different job…

The crazy ambitions of Jimmy Butler when he was in college

In the history of the league, there have been several times when certain players did not really have the goal of becoming pros when they were young. With the democratization of the NBA, this kind of case happens less and less since young people dream of becoming like their idols but Jimmy Butler wanted to become a doctor. His former college teammate Joe Fulce reveals this on the microphone of The Athletic :

When we first went to Marquette and we were talking about the scholarship and going to school and all that other crap, Jimmy didn’t necessarily want to play basketball. This patient wanted to become a doctor.

When we see the current situation of Jimmy Butler, we can therefore be surprised to learn that we could have missed his talent.

However, this circuit is not so rare among players. Indeed, the legend Pau Gasol had followed a school course in medicine and was even the son of a doctor and a nurse. Eventually, the program proved too tough for him, and he ended up favoring basketball, a choice that Lakers fans still bless. Buckets is therefore not an isolated case, but may have had other motivations.

At the time of his time at Marquette University, the MVP of the 2023 Eastern Conference Finals was clearly in financial need and had to find a job that could allow him to support himself. Today, he earns around $40 million a year and will probably never find himself in need again. The choice to have persevered in basketball has paid off.

Sometimes the paths players take are convoluted and fraught with pitfalls. Jimmy Butler’s story is very special and we could therefore have seen him in a doctor’s coat, even if we obviously prefer him with the Miami tunic on the court…