PHILADELPHIA — Sometimes Mike Marquis would laugh to himself as he watched TV in the morning, as he listened to the sports-talkers on the take-fests bat around Jimmy Butler as their topic du jour. There was always an element of doubt and mystery to their discussions about Butler. Is he a superstar? Is he not a superstar? “He was still playing this week,” Marquis said. “There were a whole lot of great ones who weren’t.” But to the coach who, 15 years ago, offered Butler a scholarship seconds after seeing him walk into a gym for the first time, the secret to understanding and evaluating him is strangely simple.
Marquis had Butler for just one year at Tyler (Texas) Junior College and has known him longer than any coach since high school. It was enough for him to gain a lasting appreciation of the qualities that made Butler the most compelling player of this NBA postseason and that would have made him a perfect Philadelphia athlete had the 76ers made the bold decision to keep him here.
“When he was here, and even when I watch him now, I always thought he had a burning, burning desire either to prove himself right or prove everyone else wrong,” Marquis said in a recent phone interview from his home in Lindale, Texas. “He is as good at self-motivation as I’ve ever seen a person be.”
