Kenny Smith believes that Jimmy Butler is in the perfect roster situation for him to be expressive. The TNT analyst also threw in a joke about him being related to Michael Jordan while doing so.
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Jimmy Butler was born on September 14, 1989, in Houston, Texas. Michael Jordan and his Bulls were not in Texas at any point during his possible conception period. And yet, people have been using this as a falsified basis to speculate whether Butler is Jordan’s illegitimate son.
The gag has grown pretty old by now. Dating back to 2015, Butler’s play has been compared to Jordan’s for the Bulls, leading to these outlandish suggestions.
It is no surprise that TNT analyst Kenny Smith has also joined into this fun
Kenny Smith was a guest on the Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz and Amin Elhassan yesterday. The former Rockets guard spoke a lot about Michael Jordan, including how he might not have liked playing in the social media era.
Their conversation eventually veered towads this year’s playoffs, at which point Stugotz had a pointed question about how the narrative around Jimmy Butler has changed from being a perceived locker room cancer to leading a championship-caliber team expertly.
Kenny Smith took his time to take the p*** out of the question, before answering it head-on. “Are you talking about Michael Jordan’s son?”, he said, leading to a hysterical reaction from everyone:
“I think Jimmy is kind of like the yelling coach. When they’re winning, people go ‘Oh, that’s such great intensity. The guy fires everyone up’. But when he’s losing, all the team is tuning him out. ‘He’s a cancer to the team’ – that’s Jimmy Butler, he’s the yelling coach.”
“So his style of play, when you’re winning, is going to get praised, but when you’re losing, could be viewed as disruptive. So he just found a group of guys that embraces the lack of disruption.”
Butler and his Heat are 1 win away from their 3rd Conference Finals in 4 years
Jimmy Butler put in 2 performances of a lifetime to stave off the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in round 1. However, he’s been nursing an ankle injury from the late stages of game 1 of their second-round series.
Despite this, the Heat hold a 3-1 record in games he’s played in this second round. Although Butler scored only 19 points last night, he was still a big factor on the Heat offense, keeping the game within touching range.
They only need another win – with game 6 at home – to move to the Conference Finals against either Philly or Boston. Given Jimmy’s current hot streak, the Heat will be fancying their own chances of revisting the NBA Finals.
