NBA Star Jimmy Butler Wears Santos FC Shirt During Miami Heat Game

NBA star Jimmy Butler earned himself a lot of new fans in Brazil last night after wearing a Santos FC jersey while sitting on the bench at the Miami Heat vs Sacramento Kings game.

NBA Sta Jimmy Butler Wears Santos Jersey

Jimmy Butler plays for Miami Heat and is one of the biggest names in the NBA, so his choice of attire attracted quite a lot of attention, especially in football kit and Santos-supporting circles. He wore Santos' current third shirt as he sat out Wednesday night's game, complete with his name and number 10 printed on the back. The shirt in question features Nigerian tribal patterns and was released a few months ago as part of Umbro's "Nations" collection for their Brazilian clubs, so the brand will no doubt be happy for it to get some free publicity like this.

Butler is supposedly a keen football fan, having developed an interest in the sport after watching Neymar play for Brazil at the 2016 Olympics and going on to strike up a friendship with the PSG attacker. He's also a friend of Paul Pogba, whose France jersey he was spotted wearing in the past, and has been pictured with a number of other well-known players, as tends to happen when you are an NBA superstar.

He's not the first basketball legend to wear a Santos shirt and hang out with Neymar though. All-time NBA top scorer, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, met up with him in Brazil when Neymar was still at Santos, towering over him in a photoshoot that Neymar would be very unlikely to agree to if you were to propose it to him today.

Can you think of any other surprising crossovers in football and other sports? Let us know in the comments.