A bonding experience
Crowder, Butler grew together at Marquette
That time at Marquette was tempestuous in a growth-inducing kind of way.
“That just reminds me of how bad a player I was at one point in time, man,” said Jimmy Butler, whose team was taking on a decorated newcomer named Jae Crowder.
The junior forward was the 2010 Junior College Player of the Year after driving Howard College to a national title.
Butler, a senior, may have ruled the roost at Marquette — considered it his team — but thanks to a constant effort by coach Buzz Williams to keep him grounded, he had a habit of looking at others as more gifted.
“I didn’t know how to do any better than what I was told,” Butler said. “That was get the ball and give it to the good players — that’s literally what Buzz was telling me. ... Jae was so much better than me, probably everybody on my team was. I just worked and it was fun. I was a kid back then.”
Williams, now the coach at Virginia Tech, hopes to be in Chicago for tonight’s Game 3 between Crowder’s Celtics and Butler’s Bulls, and he knows what to expect when they guard each other.
Most of the time at Marquette, they practiced head-to-head — giving more balance to the starting and reserve units that way. And what’s apparent now between the two was apparent the moment Crowder and what Williams calls his resume arrived in Milwaukee in the fall of 2010.
“From the beginning there was an unspoken back and forth between the two,” Williams said via text last week.
“By the time Jae arrived, Jimmy already knew the lay of the land,” Williams said. “He had been a part of every practice and game that MU had had since I was hired. He knew the rhythm and routine in every part of our program, and had played in three NCAA tournament games.
“Jae was a juco national POY, had won a national championship. Jimmy was a former Texas juco product too, so Jae’s resume had zero effect on Jimmy.”
Except Butler sometimes felt the need to exert his authority. As Crowder recently said with a smirk, “I was feeling myself a little bit.”
So Butler took him down a couple of notches.
“I can’t recall what I said — a lot of bleep, bleep, bleeps,” Crowder said. “That’s one thing our coach let us do. He let us handle it. We all knew we were in it for the same cause. I just didn’t know what to expect at that time and he did.” Brothers in arms
Crowder, both a high school quarterback and point guard, was in the midst of a growth spurt that eventually stretched out his heavy frame. But that chubby physique is also one reason he wasn’t recruited coming out of Georgia’s Villa Rica High.
He shed the baby fat by the time he reached Marquette, but whether Crowder knew it or not, he still needed a mentor. In the midst of their battles in practice, Butler took on that role.
“We’re brothers,” Crowder said. “When I came to Marquette he had already been there a few years. I was a newcomer. At the time he was sort of like a big brother — took me in. . . . For sure I had to prove myself. We had battles in practice, battles in the open gym. Never went off the floor because we were always brothers. As a team we always did stuff together, but we battled. We came out of it respecting each other’s games.
“He had a work ethic like no other. For sure I learned that,” he said. “I take my time and hone in on what I do best. He’s the type of guy who goes in the gym and won’t work on stuff he doesn’t use in the game. I took that from him, because I used to go into the gym and work on a lot of different things. He’d be there all day, but he’d work on what he does best and try to get better at it.”
Butler’s Houston beginnings are well-chronicled — kicked out of the house by his mother at age 13, couch surfing through the homes of friends during adolescence, somehow rising through junior college and Williams’ boot camp at Marquette to become an NBA All-Star.
“That is really where his drive comes from, I feel like,” Crowder said of Butler’s life. “Knowing how much that really sparks a fire in him, I think a lot of his success comes from what he went through before off the court. It speaks of him as a person, too, being able to overcome that and bounce back and become a household name. But a lot of his success comes from what he’s been through.”
Crowder, who became Big East Player of the Year a year later, had a lot to learn from his rival. But Butler shrugs off the compliments.
“I may have shown him the way, but Jae was more talented and an overall better player than anybody when he got there,” said Butler. “He could do everything. He just fell in love with the process, man, and he combined his natural-born talent and giftedness with hard work, and he just took off.
“You don’t have to speak on stuff like that with him. You just go out there and do it, and people follow suit and they pay attention to what it gets you. That’s what Jae was doing. It was like, I have nothing else to do, I’m going to get in here and work too. It just becomes habit — you’re used to it, you love it, you want to do it all the time. I didn’t have to tell him anything. I just showed him a couple of things.” Kindred spirits
Williams basks in pride now when he watches these two, knowing what they drew out of each other during the 201011 season at Marquette, which ended with a loss to North Carolina in the Sweet 16.
“In hindsight, I think both of them learned from one another — although they never would have said that during the year they played together — until we got toward the end of the year when admittedly they realized we were better together,” said Williams. “I am still very close to both of them, and we talk consistently year around — but I don’t think either think of themselves in the way they are viewed from the outside. They are humble and grateful for the opportunity to live out their dreams, but very driven in their daily approach and work ethic to continue to be more than anyone thought possible.”
When Butler and Crowder look at each other now — when Crowder squares up as Butler puts the ball on the floor, lowers his shoulder and tries to win the battle for real estate — they recognize that common pedigree.
“Buzz, man. Buzz always brought in dogs that just played so hard,” said Butler. “You look at what (Tom) Crean started there as well with Dwyane Wade. When you have guys like that who don’t back down from any challenge, you’re setting yourself up to win. Some guys are intimidated and some are up to the challenge. You smile like, I get to go up against the best. Jae thinks like that. I think like that. That’s the only way you’ll feel like you belong.”