AS JIMMY BUTLER boarded his first team flight with the Golden State Warriors the day before his Feb. 8 debut against the Chicago Bulls, he had something in his carry-on that he rarely travels without -- his dominoes.
It's an integral part of some of his fondest memories with his late father, Jimmy Butler Jr., who died a year earlier. His father drove an 18-wheeler and spent long days on the road but still had time to introduce his son to the world of dominoes. He educated Butler on strategy, how to always pay attention to the surroundings and the opponents' tells, and most important of all, how to become a winner.
"It's funny because that's how me and my dad would hustle people," Butler told ESPN. "We would play against some grown folks and they'll bet five dollars. ... And my dad would be like, 'All right, I'll take my son.' And everybody would be like, 'Oh man, come on man! That's no challenge! We gonna beat up on y'all.' Sometimes we would lose, but majority of times we would win."
Butler remembers how his father displayed the dominoes in the exact way they were during the previous defeat and explained his mistakes.
"His mind was so good with numbers and dominoes," Butler said. "Like mine is now, which is definitely what I got from him.
"I'd be like, 'How the f--- would I remember what I did two hours ago [let alone two weeks ago]?' And he was like, 'If you'd been paying attention, this is what you should have done and then we can run the board and we can win.'"
Butler has transferred these same practices to the basketball court, watching everything from opponents' frustrations with their coach or a referee to their limps and winces that he can use to his advantage.
"It's from the person that made me Jimmy Butler III," said the Warriors forward, who added the generational suffix to his name and jersey to honor his late father when he joined Golden State. "When I think about it, that's how my dad taught me how to count.
"I started to learn the importance of winning, of dominating, of being the best. And I have surpassed him in that. Before he passed, I was better than he was."
Butler's opponent in dominoes on this flight was Draymond Green, who had been waiting for this match. In the month and a half since then, the two have 19 NBA games together under their belts and have formed a bond that has shaped them as teammates.
When the Warriors traded with the Miami Heat for Butler on Feb. 5 and subsequently signed him to a two-year, $111 million deal, they were taking a gamble that he would salvage a once-promising season that was sinking fast, and give Green and Stephen Curry a much-needed boost toward a playoff berth. The move has worked: The Warriors have gone 16-3 with Butler in the lineup, climbing to sixth place in the Western Conference and only two games out of securing home-court advantage in the first round of the postseason. The Heat, meanwhile, are 5-17 since the trade, and they just snapped a 10-game losing streak, their longest since since 2008.
As Butler returns to Miami on Tuesday after a tumultuous breakup, the six-time All-Star has not only injected life into the Warriors but has developed chemistry with Green that could determine how far the Warriors go this season.
"Two winners that would do anything to win," Butler told ESPN of his relationship with Green. "He could care less about personal success. He's just trying to win a championship.
"I just want to win. I don't give a f--- about nothing else. We ain't going to never butt no motherf---ing heads. ... That's what people keep overlooking. They think like we going to get in fist fights. No we not. Because all we want to do is win."
Butler owned Green, something the ultracompetitive defender didn't forget. Since then, Green has played a lot more dominoes -- even playing online against friends -- and got better over the past decade.
But so did Butler, who Green says is "a master at all of [the variety of dominoes games]."
"It's like basketball. You know how to see plays before they even come," Green told ESPN. "You can read the dominoes based off of what someone is playing. You have to manipulate the dominoes to get what you want out there to put the other person in a tough position. He's really f---ing good."
After playing countless hours on team flights and in their hotel rooms, Green finally earned his first win over Butler recently. But the real breakthrough happened between those domino sessions. The two would have long, deep conversations about how they grew up in places such as Tomball, Texas, and Saginaw, Michigan, how 29 teams passed on Butler in the 2011 draft and 34 teams skipped over Green the next year and how they can be misunderstood.
The two talk and laugh for so long that they lose track of time, sometimes forgetting to eat dinner and realizing in the wee hours of the morning that they have shootaround soon. Butler said they spent nearly six hours playing dominoes with locals at his Big Face coffee shop in Miami on Sunday.
"You heard all these stories about Jimmy Butler's story," Green said. "But I've never really heard the full story. I just heard bits and pieces of it. So I'm kind of using this time to get to know his story.
"Because Jimmy's like this closed book that no one really knows."
