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    The N.C.A.A. Agreed to Pay Players. It Won’t Call Them Employees.

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    The argument is the organization’s attempt to maintain the last vestiges of its amateur model and to prevent college athletes from collectively bargaining.The immediate takeaway from the landmark $2.8 billion settlement that the N.C.A.A. and the major athletic conferences accepted on Thursday was that it cut straight at the heart of the organization’s cherished model of amateurism: Schools can now pay their athletes directly.But another bedrock principle remains intact, and maintaining it is likely to be a priority for the N.C.A.A.: that players who are paid by the universities are not employed by them, and therefore do not have the right to collectively bargain.Congress must “establish that our athletes are not employees, but students seeking college degrees,” John I. Jenkins, the president of the University of Notre Dame, said in a statement when the agreement was announced.It is the N.C.A.A.’s attempt to salvage the last vestiges of its amateur model, which for decades barred college athletes from being paid by schools or anyone else without risking their eligibility. That stance came under greater legal and political scrutiny in recent years, leading to the settlement, which still requires approval by a judge.On its face, the argument may seem peculiar. Over the past decade, public pressure and a series of court rulings — not to mention the reality that college athletics generated billions of dollars in annual revenue and that athletes received none of it — have forced the N.C.A.A. to unravel restrictions on player compensation. A California law that made it illegal to block college athletes from name, image and licensing, or N.I.L., deals paved the way for athletes to seek compensation, some of them receiving seven figures annually.At the same time, college sports have become an increasingly national enterprise. Regional rivalries and traditions have been tossed aside as schools have switched conference allegiances in pursuit of TV money. Individual conferences can now stretch from Palo Alto, Calif., to Chestnut Hill, Mass., meaning many athletes in a variety of sports are spending more time traveling to games and less time on campus.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The NCAA Agreed to Pay Players. It Won’t Call Them Employees.

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      The argument is the organization’s attempt to maintain the last vestiges of its amateur model and to prevent college athletes from collectively bargaining.The immediate takeaway from the landmark $2.8 billion settlement that the N.C.A.A. and the major athletic conferences accepted on Thursday was that it cut straight at the heart of the organization’s cherished model of amateurism: Schools can now pay their athletes directly.But another bedrock principle remains intact, and maintaining it is likely to be a priority for the N.C.A.A.: that players who are paid by the universities are not employed by them, and therefore do not have the right to collectively bargain.Congress must “establish that our athletes are not employees, but students seeking college degrees,” John I. Jenkins, the president of the University of Notre Dame, said in a statement when the agreement was announced.It is the N.C.A.A.’s attempt to salvage the last vestiges of its amateur model, which for decades barred college athletes from being paid by schools or anyone else without risking their eligibility. That stance came under greater legal and political scrutiny in recent years, leading to the settlement, which still requires approval by a judge.On its face, the argument may seem peculiar. Over the past decade, public pressure and a series of court rulings — not to mention the reality that college athletics generated billions of dollars in annual revenue and that athletes received none of it — have forced the N.C.A.A. to unravel restrictions on player compensation. A California law that made it illegal to block college athletes from name, image and licensing, or N.I.L., deals paved the way for athletes to seek compensation, some of them receiving seven figures annually.At the same time, college sports have become an increasingly national enterprise. Regional rivalries and traditions have been tossed aside as schools have switched conference allegiances in pursuit of TV money. Individual conferences can now stretch from Palo Alto, Calif., to Chestnut Hill, Mass., meaning many athletes in a variety of sports are spending more time traveling to games and less time on campus.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How March Madness Upsets Can Bring Attention and Money to Universities

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      As administrators at universities like St. Peter’s, Fairleigh Dickinson and Florida Gulf Coast can attest, upset victories bring attention, alumni donations and a lot of work.When Oakland University’s 14th-seeded men’s basketball team defeated No. 3 Kentucky on Thursday night, delivering the first shocking upset of this year’s N.C.A.A. tournament, it cast a spotlight on the relatively anonymous university based in Rochester, Mich.And if history is any indication, the next few days and weeks — and perhaps longer — promise to be a lucrative time for the school.Upset victories by double-digit seeds are not just a big deal for busted tournament brackets. They also raise the profile of the schools who pull off the shockers. Big wins routinely lead to spikes in applications, enrollment and, as the university community rallies around its team, alumni contributions. Media coverage leads to attention that is otherwise hard to come by, and the name recognition can be long lasting.“It was a bit surrealistic,” said Eugene Cornacchia, the president of St. Peter’s, whose men’s basketball team also upset Kentucky in 2022. “It was exciting to win, but I didn’t necessarily understand the onslaught of the attention that would ramp up so quickly.”After the victory, Cornacchia said his phone was ablaze with text messages from friends, alumni and members of the media. His school, a Jesuit university based in Jersey City, N.J., with an enrollment of around 3,000 students and an endowment of less than $40 million, had previously been to three tournaments and won zero games.The team went on to win its next two games, before falling in the regional final to North Carolina.The tournament run was good for business. In the eight months before the win by St. Peter’s over Kentucky, the university sold roughly $58,000 worth of merchandise, Cornacchia said. After the upset and through the end of that month, it sold more than $300,000 worth of merchandise and ran out of its supply in a matter of days. Yearly commitments from donors rose from $450,000 to more than $2 million.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Big Year for Women’s College Basketball in New York

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      Both the Columbia and N.Y.U. women’s teams made it to postseason tournaments.Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll look at why this season was a first for women’s college basketball in New York City. We’ll also find out how LaGuardia Community College will spend a $116.2 million grant from a foundation run by Alexandra Cohen, whose billionaire husband bought the New York Mets in 2020.Ryan Hunt/Getty ImagesThis was the first season that Columbia University’s women’s basketball team made it to the N.C.A.A. Division I tournament.New York University’s women’s team, undefeated in 31 games, also made it to the postseason, making this the first year that the two colleges have done so at the same time — Columbia in Division I, with an at-large place in the Big Dance, and N.Y.U. in Division III. N.Y.U. won the national title in Division III by ending Smith College’s 16-game winning streak, 51-41.“We kind of pulled away in the end, and one of the officials congratulated me on winning,” said Meg Barber, the coach of the N.Y.U. team. “This was probably with about 45 seconds left. I said, ‘Not yet.’ I was like, ‘It’s not over yet,’ and he was like, ‘Yes it is.’”And next season?“I’ve barely processed that we won the national championship,” Barber told me on Thursday, “so I haven’t really thought about next year.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dartmouth Players Are Employees Who Can Unionize, U.S. Official Says

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      A regional director for the National Labor Relations Board cleared the way for the collegiate men’s basketball team to hold a vote.A federal official said Monday that members of the Dartmouth men’s basketball team were university employees, clearing a path for the team to take a vote that could make it the first unionized college sports program in the country.In a statement, the National Labor Relations Board’s regional director in Boston, Laura Sacks, said that because Dartmouth had “the right to control the work” of the team and because the team did that work “in exchange for compensation” like equipment and game tickets, the players were employees under the National Labor Relations Act.A date for the election on whether to unionize has not yet been set, and the result would need to be certified by the N.L.R.B. The university and the N.C.A.A. are expected to appeal the director’s decision.In September, all 15 players on the team’s varsity roster signed and filed a petition to the labor board to unionize with the Service Employees International Union. On Oct. 5, Dartmouth’s lawyers responded by arguing that the players did not have the right to collectively bargain because, as members of the Ivy League, they received no athletic scholarships and because the program lost money each year.The N.C.A.A. and its member schools have long resisted unionization attempts by college athletes, defending the student-athlete model that has come under fire by labor activists, judges and elected officials over the years.In 2014, the Northwestern football team led the highest-profile attempt by a college program to unionize, arguing that because the players were compensated through scholarships, they had the right to bargain collectively.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gary Colson, Who Lobbied for 3-Point Shot in College Ball, Dies at 89

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      On a rules committee, he got fellow coaches to vote for the shot that changed the game. In 34 years as a college coach, he won 563 games with four teams.Gary Colson, who successfully lobbied to introduce the 3-point shot to college basketball during a 34-year coaching career that included stops at Fresno State, New Mexico and Pepperdine, died on Friday at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 89.The cause was complications of lymphoma, said Bob Rose, a friend, who said he had been told of the death by Colson’s wife.Colson, who had a career win-loss record of 563-385, was a member of the N.C.A.A. rules committee in 1986 when he sought a straw vote from the members to see who was in favor of adding the 3-point shot.He said he was discouraged by a number of his fellow coaches from asking for a vote. But he did anyway, and the proposal passed.The rule, which originally awarded three points for baskets made from a distance of 19 feet 9 inches or more, had little effect at first. But the 3-point shot (the current distance is 22 feet 1¾ inches) has since become an important part of the game. It had been adopted by the National Basketball Association in 1979.Colson began his head coaching career at Valdosta State College (now Valdosta State University) in Georgia when he was only 24. He led the team to a 188-69 record from 1958 to 1968 and took it to two appearances in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics’ national tournament.He next coached at Pepperdine, a small Christian school in Malibu, Calif., from 1968 to 1979, leading the team to the 1976 West Coast Athletic Conference title. The Waves went 153-137 and earned two N.C.A.A. tournament berths during his tenure.“Coach Colson put Pepperdine men’s basketball on the national college basketball map,” the school’s current athletic director, Steve Potts, said in a statement.Colson left Pepperdine in 1980 to take over at New Mexico, which was reeling after a gambling scandal that resulted in the firing of the head coach, Norm Ellenberger, and the program’s being placed on N.C.A.A. probation for three years.After probation ended in 1983, the Lobos averaged 21 wins over the next five seasons, qualifying for the National Invitational Tournament each of those years. Colson went 146-106 at New Mexico from 1980 to 1988 and was the Western Athletic Conference coach of the year in 1984.He was 76-73 at Fresno State from 1990 to 1995.Gary Colson was born in Logansport, Ind., on April 30, 1934. He graduated from David Lipscomb College (now Lipscomb University) in Nashville in 1956 and earned a master’s degree in education at Vanderbilt in 1958. He was an all-conference player at Lipscomb and was named the Volunteer State Athletic Conference M.V.P. as a senior.He later worked as assistant to the president of the Memphis Grizzlies.He is survived by wife, Mary Katherine; his sons, Rick and Wade; his daughter, Garianne; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. More

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      Nikki McCray-Penson, Basketball Star and Coach, Dies at 51

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      After a standout college career at the University of Tennessee, she won two Olympic gold medals, played nine years in the W.N.B.A. and was the head coach at two universities.Nikki McCray-Penson, an all-American point guard for the powerhouse University of Tennessee women’s basketball team, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and a three-time All-Star in the W.N.B.A., died on Friday. She was 51.Her death was announced by Rutgers University, where she was about to enter her second season as an assistant coach of the women’s basketball team. The school did not say where she died or cite a cause. McCray-Penson had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013.“Thank you my little sister, my friend, my foxhole partner, my teammate, my fast food snacker, my basketball junkie, my fellow Olympian, my gold medalist and now my angel,” Dawn Staley, the women’s basketball coach at the University of South Carolina, where McCray-Penson was an assistant coach for nine years, wrote on Twitter.At Tennessee, McCray-Penson was a two-time all-American and a three-time all-Southeastern Conference player. She helped lead the Lady Vols to three consecutive regular-season conference titles and two conference tournament championships.She began as a defensive specialist, but she evolved into an offensive force.“It bothered her that she was considered so much of a defensive player,” her Basketball Hall of Fame coach, Pat Summitt, told The Tennessean of Nashville in 1994, late in McCray-Penson’s breakout season, when she averaged 16.3 points a game as a junior. “She wanted to develop the total game, and she has.”In the same article, McCray-Penson said, “I had to learn to respond when being criticized and learn from mistakes. Pat is not going to motivate you.” She added, “You have to come out with an attitude about yourself, and that comes from maturity.”Sally Jenkins, a sports columnist who collaborated with Summitt on three books, said in a phone interview that there was a special connection between the coach and McCray-Penson. “Pat glowed when Nikki came to visit,” she said.She added: “There were a lot of players who came to Tennessee who were like 15-story buildings, but the elevators only went to the 10th floor. Some kids found a way to get to the top and develop all their promise. Nikki was one of those.”McCray-Penson at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. She was a two-time Olympic gold medalist.Darren McNamara/Getty ImagesAfter graduating from Tennessee in 1995 with a bachelor’s degree in education, McCray-Penson became part of the U.S. team that would win the gold medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. After an early-round victory over South Korea, in which McCray-Penson led the team with 16 points and nine rebounds, she said, “We want to be the best basketball team in history.”Overall, she averaged 9.4 points a game in the tournament and provided some of the stifling defense that limited opponents’ scoring. Four years later, when the U.S. team won the gold medal in Sydney, Australia, McCray-Penson averaged 5.1 points.By then, she had turned professional. With the Columbus Quest of the short-lived American Basketball League, which preceded the W.N.B.A. as a women’s league, she averaged 19.9 points a game, led the team to the league championship in 1997 and was named most valuable player.She did not stay with the A.B.L. for long. She jumped after one season to the Washington Mystics of the W.N.B.A., which had been created by the National Basketball Association.“I saw what the N.B.A. can do to promote women’s basketball,” she told The Associated Press in 1997.Starting in 1998, she spent four seasons with the Mystics, averaging 15.4 points a game and was chosen for three All-Star games. She had less success over the next five years, when she played in Indianapolis, Phoenix, San Antonio and Chicago. She retired in 2006.McCray-Penson in Norfolk, Va., in 2017, when she was the women’s basketball coach at Old Dominion University there.Steve Earley/The Virginian-Pilot, via Associated PressShe quickly moved into coaching: She was an assistant women’s coach at Western Kentucky University for two years before moving to South Carolina in 2008, where she joined Staley, her teammate on the 1996 and 2000 Olympic teams.After helping lead South Carolina to its first N.C.A.A. women’s basketball title in 2017, McCray-Penson was hired for her first head coaching job, at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. She coached the team to a 53-40 record over three seasons; in the 2019-20 season, she led the Monarchs to a 24-6 record and was named Conference USA coach of the year.In 2020, she was named the head coach at Mississippi State University, but she resigned for health reasons after a 10-9 record in her only season there.In 2022, Rutgers hired her as an assistant.“Simply put, Nikki is a winner,” Coquese Washington, the Rutgers coach, who was a teammate of McCray-Penson’s with the W.N.B.A.’s Indiana Fever, told The Associated Press. “She has excelled at the highest levels of our game.”McCray-Penson was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, in Knoxville, Tenn., in 2012.Nikki Kesangane McCray was born on Dec. 17, 1971, in Collierville, Tenn. Her survivors include her husband, Thomas Penson, and her son, also named Thomas. Her mother, Sally Coleman, died of breast cancer in 2018.“We know there’s no cure,” McCray-Penson told The Clarion Ledger of Jackson, Miss., in 2020. “We live with it. Every day, you don’t let that define you. You live life. You make every day count. That’s what I saw my mom do.” More

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      Stanford Golf Star Rose Zhang Is Ready for Her Professional Debut

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      Zhang’s career is likely to become a case study in athletic development, long-range planning and skillful marketing, now that college athletes are allowed to make money.Not long before Rose Zhang clutched a microphone on Tuesday, Michelle Wie West laughingly made an observation: Zhang might have logged more weeks as the world’s No. 1 amateur women’s golfer than Wie West spent as an amateur, period.It was an exaggeration — even though Wie West became a professional at 15 years old and Zhang spent more than 140 weeks in the top spot — but it also wryly underscored how Zhang’s rise in women’s golf is playing out differently from how other ascending stars built their careers.In Zhang, who will make her professional debut this week at the Americas Open in Jersey City, N.J., women’s golf is getting the rare prodigy who has played for an American college. And Zhang’s career, however long it lasts and whatever victories it yields, is essentially certain to become a case study in athletic development, long-range planning and skillful marketing, especially now that college athletes are allowed to make money in ways that were forbidden as recently as two years ago.“I believe that if you’re not able to conquer one stage, then you won’t be able to go on to the next one and say it’s time for the next step,” Zhang, 20, said on Tuesday. “So I wanted to see how I fared in college golf, and it turned out well.”To put it mildly.Zhang’s victory in April at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, where she posted a tournament-record score one day and broke it the next, let her complete women’s amateur golf’s version of the career Grand Slam since she had already won the U.S. Women’s Amateur, the U.S. Girls’ Junior and an individual N.C.A.A. title for Stanford.Zhang after winning the Augusta National Women’s Amateur tournament.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAnother Stanford golfer, Tiger Woods, achieved a similar feat in the 1990s. But this month, Zhang added a second individual championship in N.C.A.A. play.Woods competed for Stanford in a wholly different time for college sports, a time when N.C.A.A. athletes were barred from selling their autographs or cutting endorsement deals. When Woods turned pro in 1996, the sponsorships promptly rained down on him. Zhang’s timeline has moved even faster: Wednesday is the first anniversary of the announcement that Adidas had signed her.The economic possibilities in college sports have lately enticed top athletes to pursue degrees and cultivate their talents while earning money and curbing the immediate allures of turning pro. Those possibilities had less of an effect on Zhang, who is from Irvine, Calif., and who chose to attend college before a wave of state laws pressured the N.C.A.A. to loosen its rules in 2021.But they could help shape women’s golf going forward, particularly if Zhang proves that the American college game is far from an athletic dead-end and that pre-prom professionalism is not the surest path to stardom. For some time, it has often seemed that way: Of the women ranked in the top 10 on Tuesday, only one, Lilia Vu, played N.C.A.A. golf (at U.C.L.A.).Representing Stanford, Zhang walked the course at the N.C.A.A. Division I women’s golf championships at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz., this month.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesZhang, who plans to continue her Stanford studies but will no longer be eligible to play N.C.A.A. golf, believes that her stint on campus has hardly been time wasted. She said in April that her tenure as a college athlete had been “such an important stage for me” because she craved figuring “out who I really was and my independence.”She added: “It really allowed me to get my own space and really understand what I’m about, and that allows me to improve on my golf game because I realize that a profession is a profession but yourself is also something that you need to work on.”Her professional prospects had not been far from mind, though. She recalled Tuesday that she told her Stanford coach from the beginning that she was aiming to become a professional, even if her schedule for doing so was hazy.In her first season at Stanford, she said, she did not consider professional golf at all. As her sophomore year progressed, she said, it “felt like it was time for the next stage.”“I feel like right now the mind-set is also very simple: try to adjust as much as possible to tour life and figure out what it means to be a professional, what I want to do out here,” said Zhang, already adorned with the logos of Adidas, Callaway, Delta Air Lines and East West Bank. “I feel like I have a lot of time to experiment what I want to do, so that’s kind of the mind-set that I have going throughout my career and even going forward.”Zhang hitting from the fairway during the final round of the N.C.A.A. women’s golf championships.Matt York/Associated PressZhang is entering the professional ranks while women’s golf has no shortage of elite players. Nelly Korda, the Olympic gold medalist from the Tokyo Games, has routinely lurked around the top of leaderboards. Lydia Ko, who in 2015 became the youngest person to reach the world’s No. 1 ranking in professional golf, remains such a dependable power and brilliant player that she was the L.P.G.A.’s money leader in 2022. Minjee Lee has won a major in each of the last two years, and Jin Young Ko returned to the top of the women’s golf ranking this month when she edged Lee in a playoff at the Founders Cup.Zhang, though, may be the player facing the greatest public pressure since Wie West became a professional almost two decades ago. (Wie West will step back from competitive golf after this summer’s U.S. Women’s Open.) Zhang insisted Tuesday that she did not feel particularly vulnerable to expectations, which she tries to perceive as more of a compliment — “They think I have the ability to go out there and win every single time” — than a demand.“Growing up, my family and the people around me have given me high expectations for what I should do as a person, not just as a competitor or a golf player, so I kind of fall back toward those morals and who I am as an individual,” she said. “That allows me to go out there on the golf course and think: ‘OK, today is another round of golf. I’m going to need to do what I need to do on the golf course. If it doesn’t work out, I still have a lot of things going for me in life.’”Zhang celebrated with her Stanford teammates after winning the NCAA women’s golf championships.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesAfter the inaugural Americas Open, which will be contested at Liberty National Golf Club, Zhang is expected to compete in the events that make up the rest of the year’s majors circuit for women’s golf. The Women’s P.G.A. Championship will be played at Baltusrol in June, followed by the U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach in July, when the Evian Championship will also be held. The Women’s British Open, scheduled for August at Walton Heath, rounds out the majors.Zhang played in three majors last year, with her best finish a tie for 28th at the Women’s British Open. (She did not enter this year’s Chevron Championship, where she tied for 11th in 2020, and instead played for, and won, the Pac-12 Conference’s individual championship.)She does not, she said, have any short-term expectations for performance. This year is about finding her way — and then letting the world watch to see if her way can work. More

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      Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat Have the Boston Celtics on the Ropes

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      Butler has shaped the Miami Heat in his no-quit, self-assured image, which is bad news for a reeling Boston team that is one loss from elimination in the Eastern Conference finals.MIAMI — For much of Game 3 of the N.B.A.’s Eastern Conference finals on Sunday, Jimmy Butler did something he does not often do: He played a supporting role. He created off the dribble, zipped passes to his Heat teammates for open shots and pushed to score only when the opportunity made too much sense not to seize it.Butler could have easily tried to take over against the reeling Boston Celtics. But he has shaped the Heat in his no-quit, self-assured image, and empowered their cast of unsung players to lead. Then, shortly before halftime on Sunday, as if anyone needed to be reminded of his presence, Butler dribbled the ball upcourt and went straight at the Celtics’ Grant Williams, his latest nemesis, for a jumper off the glass.After drawing a foul on the shot for good measure, Butler fell to his back and stayed there for longer than was necessary — just so he could point at Williams and make it clear that he had made him look foolish, again.“In all the moments of truth,” Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra said, “Jimmy is going to put his will on the game.”Another game, another clinic given by Miami, whose 128-102 victory on Sunday was an end-to-end drubbing. The Heat, who have a 3-0 series lead, will go for the sweep at home on Tuesday, driven by their increasingly credible championship dreams as an eighth seed.The Celtics looked lost in Game 3 as they fell behind the Heat by as many as 33 points.Megan Briggs/Getty ImagesThe Celtics’ Jaylen Brown called the Game 3 loss “embarrassing.” Boston Coach Joe Mazzulla took the blame. “I just didn’t have them ready to play,” he said.All things considered, it was a muted performance by Butler, who finished with 16 points, 8 rebounds and 6 assists. But for the first time in the series, he faced traps. Both he and Bam Adebayo found teammates who were willing to help. Gabe Vincent scored 29 points, and Duncan Robinson finished with 22.“Jimmy and Bam are fueling that,” Spoelstra said. “They are just infusing those guys with confidence.”It would be easy to describe Butler as a showman, as someone who turns the court into a stage. He is not an impassive person. He emotes. He interacts with opposing players. He sings to himself. And he seems to delight in those moments (plural) when a crowded arena awaits his next act.Make no mistake: There is a theatrical element to his approach, especially in the playoffs. It was on full display in Game 2 on Friday, after Williams connected on a 3-pointer to build on Boston’s narrow lead midway through the fourth quarter. Williams began jawing with Butler on his way back up the court. On the ensuing possession, Butler scored on Williams and drew a foul. Afterward, Butler and Williams knocked foreheads as they continued their — how to put this delicately? — conversation.“l like that,” Butler said. “I’m all for that. It makes me key in a lot more. It pushes that will that I have to win a lot more. It makes me smile. When people talk to me, I’m like, OK, I know I’m a decent player if you want to talk to me out of everybody that you can talk to.”Butler and Boston’s Grant Williams had a fiery exchange during Game 2 on Friday. Adam Glanzman/Getty ImagesFor Williams, talking to Butler was a miscalculation. The Heat closed that game with a 24-9 run. After the win, Butler strode to his news conference crooning along to “Somebody’s Problem,” a song by the country artist Morgan Wallen, which Butler was playing on his iPhone.“It’s a hit in the locker room right now,” said Butler, who described himself as the team D.J. “So I get to pick and choose what we listen to.”The thing about Butler, though, is that all his extracurriculars — and all the attention that he draws to himself, whether intentional or not — are a means to an end. They motivate him, push him to perform. He is not brash for the sake of being brash. He is brash because being brash helps him win.“He loves to win,” said Mike Marquis, who was his coach at Tyler Junior College, a two-year school about 100 miles southeast of Dallas. “Some people hate to lose. He absolutely loves to win. I think sometimes there’s a negative connotation with hating to lose, with bad sportsmanship and all that. But when I coached him, he didn’t have any of that — he just loved to win.”Butler, who had a difficult childhood, was not highly recruited coming out of Tomball High School in Texas. He had a scholarship offer from Centenary, a small college in Louisiana that has since transitioned to Division III, and a partial offer from Quinnipiac. But Tyler, Butler said, was where he felt wanted.Joe Fulce, a teammate of his at Tyler and later at Marquette, recalled that Butler had an uncanny ability to “curate his own world” whenever he played basketball. Outside the gym, there were problems and challenges. Inside the gym, the many distractions of his daily life somehow ceased to exist.“That’s hard as hell to do,” Fulce said. “It’s almost like he was a magician.”Butler amped up the crowd during Game 3.Megan Briggs/Getty ImagesMarquis caught another glimpse of that single-minded focus when the N.B.A. concluded its 2019-20 season inside a spectator-free bubble at Walt Disney World because of the coronavirus pandemic. While other players were going stir crazy, Butler thrived in that sort of insulated environment, hauling the fifth-seeded Heat to the N.B.A. finals before they lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in six games.Today, Butler is one of the league’s most recognizable players and a global pitchman for a low-calorie beer. But he still finds a way to close himself off from the world around him whenever he plays basketball, and he is not all that dissimilar to many of his teammates who were overlooked until they found success in Miami. The Heat have nine undrafted players on their roster, including Vincent and Robinson.Butler went to junior college. He was the final pick of the first round of the 2011 N.B.A. draft. Even this season, he was not selected as an All-Star (which, in hindsight, was probably an oversight). The veteran guard Kyle Lowry has said Butler is one of the most unselfish stars he has played with.“He is us, and we are him,” Spoelstra told reporters earlier in the postseason, as a way of explaining the synergy between Butler and the team around him. “Sometimes, the psychotic meets the psychotic.”Together, they are one win from the N.B.A. finals. More