Okay, so it wasn’t just Jimmy Butler’s pressed hair that had everyone in stitches following the NBA’s Media Day on Monday (Oct. 2).

It wasn’t just the black nail polish and eyebrow ring.

It was the hair, the nail polish, the eyebrow ring, the lip rings, and the way Butler oh-so-delicately pushed his hair out of his eyes that brought the whole thing together in headline-making history.

“Don’t let me break character right now,” the Miami Heat small forward said as he walked into the press conference – the media in the audience doing what they could (unsuccessfully) to stifle laughter.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, laugh it up. I’m emo. This is my emotional state, I’m at one with my emotions so this is what you get.”

Dude looked like that one character from “South Park” who keeps swishing his hair to the side. He looked like Lil’ Nas X after 10 years and 50 pounds of muscle.

Fam looked like the young lady with whom I worked at Borders as a teenager who was allowed to rock three bottom lip rings because God favors “alternative” White women. He looks like “Hey Ya”-era Andre 3000 and Jermaine “We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off” Stewart defied biology to make a baby together. (Gen-Zers: Stewart was a 1980s R&B singer who died of AIDS-related complications in 1997).

The whole thing couldn’t have been even more hilarious: Apparently, Butler entered the venue with a leather trench coat and combat boots, but he had to shed his Heat jersey for the press conference and photos.

Sports media is having a field day with Butler’s new look this week: Even the usually loudmouthed Stephen A. Smith seemed stunned into silence for a (very) small moment before eventually jumping in on the fun.

This is the second year in a row that Butler trolled the media for the official beginning of the NBA season: He started last year with fake locs and no facial hair, looking like the token Black elder vampire from every film series about vampires. Butler said he wore them to “make the internet mad.”

Funny though it is, Butler’s new style wasn’t even the biggest Miami Heat-related news of the day: That honor belongs to Damian Lillard getting transferred from the Portland Trailblazers to the Milwaukee Bucks to go drop bodies in the Midwest with Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Lillard not joining Butler in Miami, which was the original plan, will make it harder to secure the championship ring that still stubbornly evades Butler. But perhaps his more exigent concern is that his new and fabulous mane is destined to shrivel up into something unpretty in South Florida humidity.

Let social media tell it, however, Butler’s “lewk” is a problem. Matters not that he, like many other NBA players, is always connected to attractive, desirable celebrities and has a daughter from a model – many will assume that this is Butler’s “coming out.”  Or that the troll is “emasculating” and the latest attempt by “them” to drop the “gay agenda” on young Black boys everywhere.

But the beauty of it all is that Butler doesn’t care what you think: He’s got a nine-figure contract with the Heat for being one of the finest players of his generation. and he’s making headlines for fun and innocuous reasons that don’t involve flashing guns on Instagram Live (twice) or trash-talking an elder statesman only to get spanked by him on the court.

Lots of NBA fans would love to see the Houston native finally get his chip. It’s looking a bit dire without Lillard, but hey – the faux locs got Butler and the Heat to the Finals last year…maybe the emo look will get him even closer.

Either way, I can’t wait to see what he pulls off for the 2024-25 season. Maybe Kid’s super-high-top fade from “House Party?” That might get him the chip.

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Dustin J. Seibert is a native Detroiter living in Chicago. He loves his own mama slightly more than he loves music and exercises every day only so his French fry intake doesn’t catch up to him. Find him at wafflecolored.com.