Netflix’s ‘Starting 5’ series debuted on Wednesday, as fans were given a behind the scenes look at the lives and seasons of LeBron James, Anthony Edwards, Jayson Tatum, Domantas Sabonis, and Jimmy Butler. The series offers a unique look at how they all navigate the 2023-24 season both on the court and off of it.
For Anthony Edwards, that means becoming a father and figuring out what that means, but for Jimmy Butler, we learned it meant dealing with a tremendous loss. In episode 4 of the series, Butler reveals that his father died in early February, just before the All-Star break, and the series shows him trying to deal with the grief of that loss while still playing. In episode 5, which looks at All-Star and the start of the stretch run, Butler opens up about his struggles finding his typical mental edge as he works out, knowing the Heat need him to turn it on for the playoff push.
“Right after All-Star break, my teammates, they really need me to be a lot better. I want to always answer to that call,” Butler says. “But I could care less about basketball right now. I don’t care. Yeah I work out. Yes, I train. Because I love to do it and it takes my mind off of my dad. For that moment, I’m lost in the game and the art in getting better. But as soon as that ball’s done bouncing and I’m back home, it all settles in. Man, it sucks to hurt. It sucks to lose people. They expect you to be superhuman, which is it’s a thing in itself. But I’m very much human, and I’m hurting right now as we speak. And I hate talking about it. I hate it, but here we are.”
In the first game back from the break, Butler led the Heat to a win in New Orleans, scoring 23 points in 27 minutes, but was ejected after an altercation with Naji Marshall. The episode shows all of that, with Butler talking about all the emotions he was dealing with at the time, and how rarely athletes get looked at on the human side of things.
“I don’t think you understand until you understand, but athletes are human, too. We hurt and we cry and we grieve and we’re angry when something is going on in our life,” Butler said. “And you can’t see it, just like we can’t see what’s going on in your life either. But that doesn’t make us a bad person for being human.”
That is, more than anything else, the benefit of a series like ‘Starting 5’, as it offers a chance to see players living their lives off the court and presenting a reminder that, like all of us, they are navigating the ups and downs of life while also playing professional basketball. Butler kept his father’s passing quiet publicly prior to the series, but being open about his grief and struggles with finding the same joy and purpose on the basketball court gives some perspective on his season and everything he was dealing with.
