Tristram Korten

A few years ago, Mosley was staring into a different kind of emptiness, as the most important things in lifefamily, finances, and healthtumbled chaotically around him. He almost lost it all, and that threat sparked a renaissance. Its a journey hes still on, but it has included years of boxing, dropping more than 100 pounds, and gaining a new perspective. But first he had to kick the drugs.

Looking back, Mosley wonders if the problems werent inevitable. I had to get whipped, because I didnt appreciate anything, the 47-year-old says in his syrupy southern lilt. Hes seated at a white stone counter in his kitchen, dressed in gray workout clothes. Mosley, who sports a goatee with a bleached center stripe, looks you in the eye when he talks, searching for signs that you understand what he means. All my life I felt it was a little too easy.

Its true he has known mostly ascent. Success arrived earlyworking with Missy Elliott straight out of high school in Virginia Beach, then helping to produce Aaliyahs double-platinum album One in a Million. Accomplishment may have come fast, but Mosley worked hard to keep it up, spending hours in the studio hunched over mixing boards, headphones on, eating vanilla ice cream through the night.

Unhealthy eating habits aside, the intense focus on the creative part of his life made other areas vulnerable. In 2011, after receiving a prescription for painkillers following a root canal, Mosley started abusing OxyContin and Percocet. Then my arm started bothering me, he says, the remnant of an old injuryat 17 he was shot accidentally while working at a Red Lobster. More pain gave him an excuse to ask for more pills.

\"I had a dream that death was near. I saw myself with a white face.\"

As pressures mounted, his pill abuse worsened. Divorce proceedings with his wife, Monique, which began in 2013, dragged on for years. His finances fell into disarray. The IRS filed a $4 million lien for three years of unpaid taxes, a lapse that he attributes to confusion and inattention during his addiction. The painkillers put him in a place where everything felt all right, even when it wasnt. It put me in a great feeling of not caring, of just being free, he says. Im like traveling, doing shows, popping em, having fun, just being ignorant.

Timbaland trains at DBC Fitness in Miami. That stands for &quot;dumbbells, barbells, and cables.&quot;

He doesnt remember how many pills a day he was taking, other than to say it was way over the limit. He began to feel foggy, dull. Mosley also started putting on weight and developed prediabetes. He grew sluggish. Tired. Lost. And then there was a nightmare. I had a dream that death was near, he recalls. I saw myself with a white face. Thats when he woke up.

Mosley has a daughter, 12, and two sons, 17 and 27. He realized he needed to save himself for them. Its like a bright light going on in your brain, he says about raising children. Thats how you know what true love really is.

Crawling out of the hole his life had fallen into required strategy and planning. He moved from a 14,000-square-foot mansion outside Miami to a 2,500-square-foot condo downtown. I had to downsize, get all that superstar stuff out of the way, he says. He settled with the IRS. Then he worked to settle with his ex-wife. The divorce at the beginning was very messy, but now we are good friends.

That left his addiction, and he decided to quit all by himself. Just me and God, he says, adding that there was no other option. This was the path chosen for me. God was rebuilding my character. Mosley, raised a Baptist and today a follower of the nondenominational pastor T.D. Jakes, would lean heavily on spirituality in the fight to get clean.

His method was to take fewer and fewer pills from his existing stock until there was nothing left. That took about two weeks. Afterward came withdrawal. One of the toughest things Ive been through, he says, shaking his head at the memory. The only things that got me through it were my kids, my girl, the help of God keeping my mind still.

By this point, Mosleys girlfriend, Michelle Dennis, had moved to Miami to be with him. I have a great woman who stood by my side through the whole thing, he says. It was Dennis who found Punch Elite Fitness, in Miamis Wynwood district. Mosley had never boxed before but liked the challenge. When he walked into the gym the first time, he was in rough shape, weighing about 350 pounds at five-foot-seven, recalls gym co-owner Ricardo Wilson. (Boxing coaches remember these kinds of details.)

He had a lot of aches and pains, Wilson says. He had glute and hamstring deficiencies from lack of exercise, and he was hunched due to back pain. Before he ever stepped into a ring, Mosley had to work on posture and range-of-motion exercises, Wilson says, including hip openers, posture squats, and standing leg curls. Then came shadowboxing, jumping rope, and hitting the bag for ten three-minute rounds at a time. Eventually Mosley graduated to sparring. The workouts were hard, but nothing compared to withdrawal. When you get beat up the way I got beat up mentally, this aint hard, he says.

As Mosley began losing weight, Wilson noticed another change: His energy levels increased, and then he started challenging other clients in the gym, to push them. And Dennis kept pushing Mosley.

After a year, he had lost 50 pounds, and the couple started working out twice a day, boxing in the mornings and doing cardio and weights at night.

When Mosley had dropped 40 more pounds, he decided he wanted to level up and train where the athletes train. While continuing to box on Sundays, he moved his weekday workouts to DBC Fitness. The gym specializes in biomechanics and works with a roster of pros, including Dwyane Wade, formerly of the Miami Heat, and the Dolphins Reshad Jones.

For all the progress Mosley had made at Punch, DBC co-owner David Alexander still considered him a work in progress. His feet and ankles were not working right, Alexander says, and he came in grossly overweight, about 260 pounds. So Alexander designed a program around seven general movement patterns: squat, lunge, hinge, push, pull, twist, and gait.

He has a no-quit mentality, Alexander says. He understands that this is his new life. Its not something thats going to go away in three months. And hes committed. Tim is one of the most mentally strong guys out there.

Alexander put together a nutrition plan and hired a chef to create a menu of weekly meals to be delivered to Mosleys home. Chicken, salmon, vegetables. Three and a half liters of water a day. No processed foods. If it didnt run, grow, crawl, or swim, we dont eat it, Alexander says.

Mosleys cheat is a weekend glass of red wine, poured from a bottle from his kitchens wall-length wine fridge; he enjoys it on that waterside patio now that his life has been restored and he is living in a luxury condo. He says hes clearheaded and newly inspired, focused on growing what he started nearly 30 years ago. Im more about the team building, he says. He recently finished work with big-timers Kanye West and Coldplay, but hes also collaborating with young artists.

God has me under construction, which Im still under, Mosley says. I dont feel like Im complete. I dont want to ever feel like Im complete, cause my mind would probably get idle. God needed me to be clear so I could see what is needed, not what I want.

Tim Mosley a.k.a Timbaland in Miami,December 2019.

ON OCCASION, Tim Mosley will pour a glass of merlot, step through the sliding glass doors of his spacious white Miami home onto a patio perched over Biscayne Bay, and, as evening softens the subtropical heat, gaze out over the waves at the horizon. Known to the world as Timbaland, Mosley has earned this vista. For more than two decades, he has helped propel many of this eras most successful musicians, including Missy Elliott, Beyonc, Jay- Z, Drake, Rihanna, and Justin Timb...

How Timbaland Stared Down Death, Beat Addiction, and Lost 130 Pounds

How Jimmy Butler Became the Fittest Man in the NBA

Butler needs to be in his zone right now. Hes been in Miami barely a day, hasnt even unpacked, but he has to get back to business. Hes striding across the parking lot to a practice gym with his performance coach, James Scott. If Butlers going to be the centerpiece of the postDwyane Wade Miami Heat, theres no time for days off. Or, in this case, mornings off.

This is how you achieve success in the new age of NBA fitness: You start work hours before the likes of even LeBron have rolled out of bed. A decade ago, toughness and muscle ruled basketball (remember Ben Wallace?), but today the NBA may be more obsessed with recovery, diet, and the science of human performance than any other league.

<h1> Jimmy Butler's Day is All About Training </h1>

Butlers 4:00 a.m. workout puts him at the forefront of this revolution, kicking off an entire day devoted to complete basketball readiness. Its a rhythm, its a routine, and I dont skip any of it, he says. I dont skip any steps of the process. Every hour is mapped out, beginning with the workout, then progressing to cryo-chamber recovery, agility training, and time on the court. And when his body is resting, his mind revs up, studying game tape and honing strategic thinking via games like dominoes.

Even sleep is strictly programmed. Butler targets nine hours of shut-eye, which means lights out by 7:00 p.m. He preps for that sleep three hours earlier with herbal tea, a ban on all screens, and a cold-air diffuser. I eat when Im supposed to eat. I sleep when Im supposed to sleep, says Butler. I play dominoes when Im supposed to do that.

Scott, who worked with the Houston Rockets, has overseen Butlers entire fitness regimen for the past two years. Hes trained NBA players for 15 years, but hes never seen one quite like Butler. When I started working with Jimmy, it was the first time Id ever trained somebody at 4:00 a.m., he says. And hes never late, not by one minute, no matter the time or the place.

Butler starts his workout by shooting a ten-pound medicine ball to build wrist strength, then he holds 45-pound plates at his sides, drops them, and quickly catches them, challenging his grip. Then its on to one of his favorite drills, a game that attacks both balance and mental focus: He stands on one leg, a resistance band pulling him off-center, as Scott throws him red balls and blue balls. He must catch the red ones with his left hand, the blue ones with his right. I love thisanything single-leg I like, he says. Single-leg balance, single-leg box jumps, single-leg squats.

Bridges, planks, and other ab exercises follow, and then Butler hits the court. For the next hour, he launches about 1,000 jump shots, perfecting a shooting stroke thats made him one of the leagues deadliest scorers in the clutch. By the time the first rays of light hit the sky, hes headed home for a breakfast of egg-white omelets, avocados, berries, and black coffee before recovery time in ice or maybe yoga, then more drills.

Then, at 3:00 p.m., he returns to the American Airlines Arena, this time to see if anyone wants to play pickup. Says Scott: Its another level of intensity.

BUTLER MAINTAINS this work ethic because he knows its his only guaranteed edge. From league MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo to Clippers twin stars Paul George and Kawhi Leonard to rookie sensation Zion Williamson, the NBA continues to get bigger and more athletic, rendering Butler, generously listed at six-eight, decidedly average. He makes his living outworking and outlasting his competition. Hes led the NBA in minutes per game, and he plays both ways, attacking on defense as much as he does on offense (where hes topped 20 points per game in five different seasons)

His lone advantage: the endurance he builds in those 4:00 a.m. workouts. Hes really the most competitive guy that Ive ever been around in my entire life, says Scott. And its not just basketball. If youre playing charades with him, its the most intense game of charades youve ever played in your life. Uno, dominoes, you name it.

Or, as Butler himself puts it, he will whoop your ass. Thats it. Im tougher than you. Thats where Ill bank it at, and being tough is a talent. I back down from no one. Im scared of nobody. I dont care about the name that you have, what youve done. You cant intimidate me none. And thats whats gotten me here.

<h1> The Payoff: An Unlikely Rise to Stardom </h1>

Here is pretty remarkable for a late-first-round pick. (Butler was the 30th selection in the 2011 draft.) He was raised by a single mom until age 13, when, he has said, she kicked him out of their Tomball, Texas, home. For several weeks, he bounced around, sleeping at friends houses, until a surrogate family took him in. Basketball became his releasebut at every level, he drew little attention. He couldnt get a Division I scholarship and had to start at junior college. When he arrived at Marquette, he barely played, stuck behind eventual NBAer Wes Matthews and other future pros at guard. And he barely cracked the Chicago Bulls starting rotation during his first two years in the league.

Then in 2014, Butlers relentless approach began paying dividends. With Derrick Rose, then the Bulls star, out for the season, Butler stepped in as a starterand led the entire NBA in minutes played per game. A season later, with Rose still hobbled, Butler led the league in minutes again, this time averaging 20 points per game.

Hes been one of the NBAs top players since thenand hes experienced the leagues shifting approach to player health. In the 2014 season, he was one of seven players who averaged more than 37 minutes a game. Last season, only four players managed more than 36 minutes per game, and Butler played just 33.6 minutes a night. It was once a badge of honor to play heavy minutes in the 82-game regular season, but teams now limit the long-term wear and tear on stars, adhering to a concept known as load management. The goal is to plan training, competition, and other stressors to maximize performance with a minimal risk of injury.

So the leagues best players no longer slog through the full season. Last year, the Raptors sat Kawhi Leonard in 12 games, citing load management which left him fresh for an NBA title run. This year, Butler knows the Heat could limit his minutes. Its not a hard adjustment for me, he insists, just because I train every single day as if I have to play 48 or more minutes every single night.

When Butler is playing, he certainly wont be thinking of load management. Hell just keep focusing on the motivation hes always had: fearof losing his position among the NBA elite, of reverting to the player who couldnt crack the Bulls rotation. I dont want to go back to just being okay. So I continue to work like I have nothing, he says.

Butler pauses. You have to work, because at any certain time, this shit could be taken from you. It could be gone, he says. And when I think about that, it scares the living hell out of me.

IT'S JUST AFTER 4:00 a.m. in downtown Miami and the American Airlines Arena is shrouded in quietno cars on Biscayne Boulevard, no boats crossing the bay out front. A black Ford Expedition rolls up and out steps Jimmy Butler, swinging a portable Bose speaker thats rocking the twangy melodies of Florida Georgia Line. At heart, the fourtime NBA All-Star is a small-town Texas boy, and this beat puts him in his zone.

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Tristram Korten

Articles written by the author

How Timbaland Stared Down Death, Beat Addiction, and Lost 130 Pounds

How Jimmy Butler Became the Fittest Man in the NBA