Interlude: Nathaniel Butler on Larry Bird, Linsanity, and Sports Illustrated covers
Plus: a Michael Jordan print giveaway.
Hi everyone. Welcome to my newsletter companion to “Cover Story,” a basketball book I wrote which is set for release on October 19th and is available for pre-order here. If you want to tell your followers about my book, feel free to share this tweet or this Instagram post. If you’re not a newsletter subscriber, click here to make sure you get every post in your inbox.
If you’re not familiar with Nathaniel Butler, you’re undoubtedly familiar with his photos (take five minutes and scroll through his Instagram feed and you’ll know what I mean). Butler has been an NBA photographer since 1984, when he shot games at Madison Square Garden while working as an intern in the league’s public relations department.
The start of Butler’s NBA career coincides with the beginning of “Cover Story,” which picks up in 1984 when David Stern became the commissioner, and a player named Michael Jordan entered the league as the third overall pick of the Chicago Bulls.
The 1980s were a much different time for photographers. Butler and Andrew Bernstein (who both make cameos in “Cover Story) shot on film, dragged zip cords throughout the arena, and went to their hotel rooms after games to develop photos.
(Editor’s note: I wrote a New York Times feature in 2019 about the changing landscape of NBA photography over the years which features some great stories from Butler and other photographers. I also recorded a podcast with Butler during “The Last Dance” where he shared some great memories from the early days, including the time he turned down a pair of game-worn sneakers from Michael Jordan at the ‘92 Olympics in Barcelona.)
Butler is responsible for capturing some of the most iconic moments in league history, spanning eras featuring Michael Jordan to Kobe Bryant to LeBron James.
Since Michael Jordan’s career serves as a focal point in the first part of “Cover Story,” I got on the phone with Butler earlier this week (naturally, he just returned home and was sorting through photos from a weekend at the Basketball Hall of Fame) to see if he would be interested in providing a print from that particular era which we’re going to giveaway to a newsletter subscriber. He picked a photo sequence (above) captured at the 1988 Slam Dunk contest when Michael famously took off from the free-throw line.
All newsletter subscribers will be automatically entered into a draw for the print I will email the winner next week for their mailing address. Good luck everyone!
Before he joined the NBA, Butler attended St John’s University. Like every aspiring sports photographer at the time, he wanted to one day shoot for Sports Illustrated. Butler still remembers growing up and running to the mailbox every Thursday to see who was on the Sports Illustrated cover.
“I would read it cover to cover that night,” he recalled. “I would then tear out the pictures and put them up on the wall. I didn’t have a TV when I was younger. Getting Sports Illustrated every week was my lifeline.”
The one magazine cover Butler still remembers is the 1977 college basketball preview issue featuring Larry Bird standing alongside two cheerleaders (pictured above).
A high school freshman playing on the junior varsity team at the time, Butler remembers hearing about Bird. But it wasn’t until he picked up the Sports Illustrated issue and read the cover story that he finally learned about him in full detail. Butler would end up as an assistant for Sports Illustrated and eventually worked with Lane Stewart, who photographed Bird for the 1977 cover.
He also remembers talking to Bird about the cover shoot many years later. “I brought it up to him, and he goes, ‘Oh my god, that was terrible,’” Butler recalled. Bird complained about the three-hour photoshoot. “The guys took forever,” he told Butler. “How long does it take to take one picture?”
From Sports Illustrated to SLAM, many of Butler’s own photos have appeared on magazine covers over the years. While he gets a kick out of any seeing any of his photos on the cover, he admits there’s an extra level of excitement when his work appears on national news magazines.
One example is a shot of Jeremy Lin (pictured above) which appeared on the cover of Time at the height of Linsanity.
“That was cool for so many reasons,” Butler told me. “I’ve gotten to know Jeremy over the years a little bit, and he’s such a good guy. Linsanity was also such an amazing time. If you weren’t there in the moment, you can’t ever really explain to people what was going on. I was thankful to have experienced it at the Garden.”
Hopefully you know Nathaniel Butler a little better after this newsletter. But if you’re an NBA fan, you’ve already been appreciating his work for several decades. I’ll be back next Tuesday to talk about ESPN the Magazine’s Steve Francis-Destiny’s Child cover.
Thanks for reading the newsletter. Feel free to subscribe if it’s your first time reading. You can pre-order “Cover Story” here and find me on Twitter and Instagram. Email me if you want to chat.