Jimmy Butler’s father abandoned the family when he was an infant and when he was 13 years old living in the Houston suburb of Tomball, his mother kicked him out of the house. As Butler remembered it in a 2011 interview, she told him,
“I don’t like the look of you. You gotta go.”
He then bounced between the homes of various friends, staying for a few weeks at a time before moving on to another house. In a summer basketball league before his senior year at Tomball High School, he was noticed by Jordan Leslie, a freshman football and basketball player at the school, who challenged him to a three-point shooting contest according to a source.
>The two immediately became friends, and Butler began staying at Leslie’s house. Although his friend’s mother and stepfather, who had six other children between them, were reluctant at first, they took him in within a few months. Butler would later say,
<blockquote “They accepted me into their family. And it wasn’t because of basketball. She [Michelle Lambert, Leslie’s mother] was just very loving. She just did stuff like that. I couldn’t believe it”
Here’s him with the woman who took him in who he calls mother today
That’s a hell of a story I know his biological mom is kicking her self in the ass right now. Sounded like he used his child hood as positive motivation.
