WAY BEFORE JIMMY BUTLER BECAME JIMMY BUCKETS, before he'd take a play-in No. 8 seed to the NBA Finals, before his voice could take over practices, games and news conferences, he was just a frustrated sixth man for a fringe NCAA tournament team.
Then everything changed.
It was 2009. Butler was a junior at Marquette when Darius Johnson-Odom arrived. Almost immediately, Butler noticed the way assistant coach David "Aki" Collins bonded with the sophomore. Collins called him "DJ," and he went from pushing DJ hard to putting his arm around the new kid when he struggled.