Miami Heat star Jimmy Butler recently opened up about what it’s like being both a father and celebrity athlete.
He explained that it can be exceptionally hard to spend quality time with his daughter when people in public constantly recognize him.
“I think one of the hardest things about being a celebrity is that you can’t go be a parent from time to time,” Butler told Lane Florsheim of the Wall Street Journal. “I hate that I can’t take my daughter to the zoo because everyone wants to talk basketball or take a photo. To my daughter, I’m just her dad, she doesn’t know any different. I hate that I can’t take her to the park because there are kids who are out playing basketball and [they say], ‘Hey, let’s go play.’ I love you kids, but I literally just want to be a dad right now. A lot of times I just try to do a lot of things with her around the house, or I’ll get on my bike and put her on the back of it, stuff like that, where it can just be us.”
While NBA fans know Butler as a five-time All-Star and elite player, he’s more than that. Like any athlete, he has a life outside of sports, and his fame clearly takes a toll on him at times.
Butler welcomed his daughter into the world in 2019. When he posted about the news on social media, he shared a quote that said family is “everything.”
Recently, Butler revealed that he named Heat newcomer Kyle Lowry to be his daughter’s godfather.
Now that the two players are teammates, they’ll surely spend a lot of time around each other’s families.
