A Sixers Related Auction and Jimmy Butler

Wait, that's Jimmy Butler?

See that guy to the left of Daryl? That’s Jimmy Butler. Will explain in a bit.

I went to an event on Saturday night that was thrown by Daryl and his wife Ellen Morey to support Shane Battier’s Take Charge Foundation. The foundation, which seems to do great work, helps young people through college scholarships, and is doing a lot with the Camden Academy Charter School. We met some of the students who are being helped right now through the foundation, it’s great. (side note: I met Ellen for the first time, who does listen to the pod. Is she a Spike guy or a Mike guy? I know this answer but I do not believe I should reveal.)

They’re doing a silent auction to support the foundation, including some autographed jerseys from Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey. You can check it out here.

Now to Jimmy Butler. On the press release, and within the invite, it mentioned that one of the attendees of the event would be Jimmy Butler. To be clear, I’d have gone to the event whether or not he was there, but I thought it was a fun and random side story. I brought along one of my co-hosts from 94WIP Jack Fritz, and we were talking before about any potential awkwardness if Butler was aware of my criticism of him. I never quite thought about why Jimmy Butler would be there. “Maybe he’s friends with Shane Battier,” I thought.

In any case, I was talking to Ellen and our friend Clement from Stateside, and Ellen turned and said something to the effect of “that’s Jimmy Butler with Daryl over there.” What I saw was a tall white man wearing two different colored sneakers who looked a little like Harland Williams. “He’s an all time great ping pong player.” She laughed, and mentioned she heard me mention on the pod I’d be in the same room with Jimmy Butler, and thought it was funny that they were sort of vague about the different Jimmy Butlers. He was in fact, very good at ping pong.

Daryl is also good at ping pong, and it seems like the event was here at this place in Old City called Ping Pod so he could just beat people in ping pong and show off. I’m sure he wants to help Shane’s foundation as well, but there are a lot of ways to do that, and this one seemed specifically for Daryl to show off. What is this guy’s fucking deal anyway? He was friendly and engaging all night but any time you’d talk to him or see someone else talking to them his eyes would dart around for an empty ping pong table so he could go beat someone in ping pong.

Ricky Council IV, Andre Drummond, our friend Lauren Rosen, of course Shane Battier and a good number of other Sixers folks were there to show support. It was a good event and the foundation seems to do very good things. I can’t believe they let Daryl get away with the ping pong thing though.

- Spike