Jimmy Butler may be with the Miami Heat now, but his unceremonious exit from the Philadelphia 76ers still weighs heavy on the minds of many. In an appearance on the JJ Redick Podcast, Butler sat down to talk about his brief and "difficult" time in Philly with his former Sixers teammate.
"It was so different, and on any given day, me as a person, as a player, I didn't know who the fuck was in charge," he explained. Butler indicated that he had a number of issues when he played for the 76ers, but one of his biggest problems appeared to have been with head coach Brett Brown. "I think that was my biggest thing. I didn't know what the fuck to expect whenever I would go into the gym, whenever I'd go into the plane, whenever I'd go into the game. I was like: 'Man.' I think I was as lost as the next motherfucker."
Butler was traded from the Minnesota Timberwolves to the 76ers last season, moving to Miami Heat less than a year later in a sign-and-trade deal. One incident with Brown in Jan. 2019 made it clear he was having issues with the coach, with reports surfacing that Butler "aggressively challenged" his role in the offense. He denied it was confrontational at the time, and now he revealed that it happened because he wanted to speak up after "nothing got accomplished."Â
"Somebody told me a main reason that I didn't go back was because somebody asked: 'Can you control him?' Like: 'Can you control Jimmy? If you can control Jimmy, we would think about having him back.' I was like: 'You don't gotta worry about it. Shit, can't nobody fucking control me,'" he continued, further explaining his decision to not stick with Philly. "For one, I ain't just out there doing no bullshit, but the fact that you're trying to control a grown man? Naw, I'm cool. Because I don't do nothing that's just drastically fucking stupidly crazy. I do not do that. So don't sit here and come at me with the: 'Oh, we gotta try to control him.' Nah, you good. Don't even worry about it."Â
Listen to the full episode of the podcast here.
