Why athletes like Jimmy Butler and LeBron James always say no one believed in them

Earlier this month, Jimmy Butler pushed back against the public’s surprise that he joined the Miami Heat over the summer:

“Mother------s act like I’m not a good basketball player,” Butler told Yahoo Sports. “Like for real. Just think about that. Like I can’t come in and make a huge difference. I’m not going to say ‘carry a team’ because nobody can do it by themselves and I mean that. I’m not putting it all on myself, but I know what I’m capable of.”

In a similar vein, LeBron James launched a social media campaign this season for the hashtag #WashedKing, a sarcastic retort to the people who supposedly thought he was finished when his last season ended in injuries and the Lakers missed the playoffs.

To both athletes’ point, there probably are people who think Butler is no longer a good basketball player, and that James, despite coming off a statistical year similar to his peak, is done playing at an elite level. But those opinions are at clear odds with the general consensus. Butler and James could choose to filter out the noise. Instead, they seem to be focusing on few negative opinions in order to create a narrative around themselves as underdogs.

It’s a very human habit to remember bad things more than the good, and to turn the small negative experiences into a story about how the world is against us. We all do it. One bad response on social media will claim our attention, even in the midst of countless positive engagements. Ten thousand people can comment that they like your work, but all of that goodwill is easily derailed by one individual saying you suck. Athletes simply take over-focusing on the unpleasant to a ridiculous level.

Athletes of all statures love speaking of themselves as underdogs. In the same world former NBA rookie of the year candidate Trae Young can tweet that those who doubted him need to loudly apologize, perennial Super Bowl winner Tom Brady can claim no one believed in his team in response to just a few critics who claimed the Patriots’ era of dominance was over.

Jose Mourinho is infamous for instilling a siege mentality in his teams. He got his players to perform at their best by convincing them that everyone is against them, similar to the way the Patriots take anything that isn’t praise as a cardinal sin. Great athletes and teams are always exclaiming no one believes in them and playing with a “chip on their shoulder.”

The root cause of feeling disrespected differs for each athlete. Butler’s probably stems from his own history of being relatively underestimated. He was drafted 30th overall in 2011, and was never seen as a potential superstar until he molded himself into one through his own hard work and determination. He went from a barely recruited prospect after high school to one of the best players in the league. His career is underlined by the struggles of his personal life, in which he was abandoned by his father as an infant, then kicked out the house by his mother as a teenager.

James and Brady are dealing with insecurity of old age. It’s borderline miraculous they’re still performing at such high levels at their ages, yet no matter how great they are — and they are generational talents — time is undefeated. And as time goes on, their inevitable decline is unsurprisingly talked about more. They are objectively in the twilight of their careers, even if they take that truth as an affront.

Butler’s free agency move to the Heat was shocking simply because he likely could have chosen a better established contender if he had wanted. That he twisted himself to interpret the surprise as disrespect against his skills speaks more to the ridiculous nature of being an athlete rather than his personal oversensitivity. It shows players have to constantly see themselves as underdogs, regardless if they really are.

In our world, we are often deluded into thinking our worth is confined to our work. We are made to feel that we are in constant competition with everyone else, a state of mind only truly beneficial for an economic system that wants to squeeze the most labor and profit it can from every individual at the cost of their humanity. Life is a rat race, and you have to do more, work the hardest, and sacrifice everything that the next person won’t in order to win, or so we’re led to believe. Though what one wins is never truly clear. Everyone is an enemy and their success an indictment of your own lack of effort and ability. This delusion is a sickness that often leads to depression, anxiety, and burnout.

For athletes though, the ideas of work as worth and incessant competition are more true to the nature of their lives, at least until they retire. From the moment they begin the journey of an athlete, they are judged by their most recent output. The parameters of their bodies are measured for production. Their numbers are analyzed and compared, and from that data determinations are made of their usefulness. They are what they can do. They have to constantly maintain a high level of performance in an incredible number of games, use their downtime to work on improving, and be on-guard against anyone who might displace them from their jobs.

Every athlete’s story is, by nature, an underdog story, because each one has to beat out countless others for those few available spots. Every pro athlete, even the ones who get no playing time, have surmounted incredible odds.

The idea that the world is against you is the first lesson of the sporting world. Just take a cursory look at the history of sports commercials to see that the athletic life is founded on modeling individuals to be like Jon Snow standing against faceless hordes of fellow competitors and nameless doubters. It’s no surprise then that athletes, under such intense pressure, seem to suffer from a higher rate of negative emotional states than non-athletes.

A world that demands endless work and peak production is exhausting. It’s easy to have an existential crisis within that pressure. It’s easy to lose motivation in the rat race, as many of us know from our own lives. A good way to deal with those feelings then is to have something to fight against. To have something to prove. A narrative struggle gives one a clear goal in mind. Players believe the world is against them less out of delusion and more out of necessity. For Butler, it helps him maintain the attitude that made him a success to begin with. For James, it helps him keep going strong in his 17th professional year.

There are, of course, better and healthier ways for an individual to stay motivated. Butler and James, and everyone else who is always screaming about how no one believes in them, can dismiss the negative comments, real or imaginary, and focus on the more abundant positive adoration. Or they could perform to meet their own personal standards. Some eventually do. But to do so means reworking everything one learns from the beginning of their athletic career.

Fighting against invisible enemies in order to prove oneself has proven time and time again to be a successful tactic. It is the central sports story of how athletes view themselves and how their stories are usually told to the world. It may be annoying to hear athlete after athlete, regardless of circumstance and stature, whine that they are being doubted, the behavior should be framed within an athlete’s absurd existence. These public declarations aren’t really about legitimate personal grievances. They are about players engineering the conditions necessary to keep producing at a high level. They are about surviving.