Flanked by his Miami Heat braintrust at a conference table in the American Airlines Arena last June, team president Pat Riley played a video to show then-free agent Jimmy Butler what he envisioned.
It featured Butler wearing a Heat jersey, clasping at tough rebounds, diving for loose balls and dishing passes to shooters and cutters, and it featured music by Irish singer-songwriter Dermot Kennedy, one of Butler’s favorite artists, who crooned, “I wanna be king in your story. I wanna know who you are.”
Butler has built himself from the ground up into a multipurpose All-Star scorer.