A Tough Start in Texas Turned Jimmy Butler Into an N.B.A. All-Star

TYLER, Texas — Jimmy Butler and Joe Fulce knew enough to find a basketball hoop that was a safe distance from anyone else who happened to be working out at Wagstaff Gymnasium. Sometimes, they would play to 11. Sometimes, the player with the ball would be permitted only one dribble. Sometimes, they’d go for hours. The rules? Depended on the day. As for calling fouls?

“Had to be a straight hack,” said Fulce, an all-American forward who would try to use his long arms to neutralize Butler’s strength.

At Tyler Junior College, a leafy two-year school about 100 miles southeast of Dallas, Fulce was among the teammates who came to understand how seriously Butler treated the combative art of one-on-one basketball. It was the most pure distillation of his competitive drive.

“If you ask him to play one-on-one and you’re not really ready to play one-on-one with him, don’t do it,” Fulce said, “because it’ll mess up your relationship with him.”

Before he went to Marquette and then entered the N.B.A. as a late first-round draft pick, before he famously eviscerated teammates at a practice in Minnesota and then fashioned the N.B.A.’s Covid-era bubble into his personal stage with the Miami Heat, Butler spent one season at Tyler that set the foundation for everything that followed.

“It was the first time,” Butler said, “that someone actually took a chance on me.”

By now, Butler has cemented his reputation as one of the league’s best two-way players, a six-time All-Star with an eight-figure salary who has positioned Miami as a perennial title contender. In his spare time, he works as a global pitchman for a low-calorie beer and drinks expensive coffee.