Article about Caron Butler on ESPN The Ma …
http://espn.go.com/magazine/vol5no13butler.html
June 18, 2002
Soft Touch
by Scott Burton
ESPN The Magazine
Jim Calhoun says Caron Butler is not one to cry. This is an odd notion, coming
as it does from a man who sat right next to Caron when he broke down at his
NBA-declarin' press conference -- before it even began. Perhaps Calhoun is
trying to be droll and ironic, playing off your perception of Caron as a
hardwood killer (which he most certainly is). More likely, Calhoun -- whom
Caron calls Pops -- is trying to make a bigger point: that it takes a whole
hell of a lot to make Caron cry. Which, as this story goes, is exactly what
Caron has been through: a whole hell of a lot. To take it one step further:
Caron doesn't sweat the small stuff. The big stuff, though? Life and death,
destiny and God? Yes, Caron feels that. Hard.
Caron is feeling it now, as he drives the streets of Los Angeles in his
black Escalade, tinted windows rolled down so as not to pique the curiosity of
the LAPD. Caron is asked what this moment on the brink of mad fame, fortune
and respect at age 22 means to him. He's been asked variations of this
question several times already today, and each time his eyes swell. They swell
because the question invariably makes him flash-forward to the June 26 NBA
draft in New York and where he's going. And they swell because the question
makes him think back to where he's been, too. Because it was not that long ago
when he was just, as he puts it, "a f--in' statue," a nobody going nowhere.
"Everything positive," he says, reciting the line he'll recite another hundred
times this day. "I'm doing all the right things. On the move. No limit."
Caron rubs the mist from his eyes, and puts his foot to the gas. Weaving
through traffic, he says it again, softly: "Everything positive."
Yes, he's feeling it.
***
Caron Butler is dialed into the rhythm of LA: The bright, soothing sun that
never seems to fade, early a.m. workouts that he wishes would never end and,
after that, movies. Lots of movies. Spider-Man twice (loved it the first time,
slept through it the second). The Scorpion King (eh). And in regular
rotation at his Marina del Ray apartment: Boss of Bosses, The One and The
Answer (read into that what you will). "I love it," he says while driving to
the mall to pick out an outfit for his interview the next day with the
Rockets. "Ballin' and chillin.' Ballin' and chillin.'"
At the Santa Monica Boys & Girls Club, where Caron works out with trainer John
Welch, a former Fresno State assistant, the 6'7", 235-pounder is trying to
find his own rhythm. Scouts question whether Caron can consistently make the
NBA three. That's why he's been working it deep since he moved out here in
early May. This is how he worked it today: 20 shots from each of five spots
along the arc, with 10 free throws between each set. Caron is on, popping 13
or 14 out of 20. After his last shot, he collapses to the floor in mock
exhaustion. "I have to make sure I get good arc," he says afterward. "Put my
legs into it."
The rest of his game is already tight. He's not a rim-wrecker on the order
of Kobe Bryant or Tracy McGrady. But he has a killer handle, an explosive
first step, a sharp sense for finding attack angles and a consistent
midrange jump shot. And that's not even close to everything. He's a crafty -
- but not reckless -- passer. He loves to attack the offensive glass for
putbacks. He knows how to move his feet and use his hands to D-up. And as
one Western Conference scout points out while watching Butler work out in
LA, he knows how to do all the little things off-ball that separate a Paul
Pierce from, say, a Vince Carter: setting screens, cutting to the basket,
playing help D, directing traffic. "He makes everyone around him better,"
the scout says. "That kind of stuff matters."
Butler was the breakout star of the NCAA Tourney, averaging 26.5 ppg and 7.3
rpg while guiding the No.2-seeded Huskies to the Elite Eight, where they
lost by eight to Maryland, the eventual champion. In that game, Caron made his
legend. With the Huskies down by seven at the half, Butler told his 'mates
in the locker room: I got this. Then he scored 26 second-half points,
including a three with 13:29 left to give UConn its first lead. He finished
with a game-high 32.
Afterward, as the team walked back to the locker room, Calhoun put his arms
around his star sophomore. Caron remembers exactly what Calhoun told him, even
now, so many months later, in LA, a world away. "He said, 'That might have
been your last game in a UConn uniform. And I want you to know, you made me
very proud. You were one of the best players I ever coached, and one of the
best people I've ever been around.'"
Caron contemplates those words for a few seconds, as if Calhoun were in the
room, waiting for his reply. His eyes swell. Finally, he says, "That really
touched me." Yes, he's feeling it again.
***
Caron Butler doesn't want to hide from his past, ugly and sordid as it is, but
he really doesn't get the lingering fascination with it, either. It's all
the media wanted to ask him about during the Tourney run, and though he
answered patiently, he seethed at times underneath. "What's the story?" he
says now while walking from his car to the mall to pick up his suit. "What's
the story?"
The story is this: Caron grew up poor and fatherless in Racine, Wis., a
postindustrial city of 82,000 halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago. With
his mom, Mattie, working long hours on the assembly line at Great Northern
Corp., Butler started skipping out on school and hanging with the gangs at
Hamilton Park, just up the block from his home. At first, he says, he was just
a statue. Then: "The statue started moving."
In and out of trouble, he was frequently in juvenile court before he started
high school. When Butler was 14, he went to school to meet a friend who was
going to give him a ride home. While he was hanging out in a classroom, the
police burst in, searched him and found a small amount of cocaine and an
unloaded gun. He was arrested and later sentenced to 15 months. The first
six were spent at an adult facility near home, where guys from the
neighborhood had his back. But no one looked out for him during his stint at
Ethan Allen School for Boys in Wales, 57 miles from Racine. He attended
classes, worked in the kitchen, balled -- "No such thing as layups in those
games," he says -- and tried to survive. His first week there, one of his
rivals from the streets recognized him and called him out. Butler didn't raise
his fists, but he didn't walk away, either. That got him 15 days in solitary
confinement -- one hour for recreation, 23 hours spent completely alone.
"A lot of people hang themselves in there," he says, while pacing six steps to
illustrate the dimensions. "It's just you and your bed. And your head."
Butler had one thing going through his mind during those 15 days: "Never
again. Never again. I got to get out." That had been permanently seared into
his head three weeks earlier when he was being transported to Ethan Allen in a
Wisconsin Department of Corrections van. Caron remembers looking out the
back window as the van was pulling out of the parking lot and seeing Mattie in
her car, tears streaming down her face. She tailed the van for the entire 80-
minute trip upstate. Caron couldn't take his eyes off her. "I disappointed
her," he says. "I never wanted to see her suffer again."
While Butler was locked up, the world around him changed. He became a father
at 15 when his daughter, Camry, was born. And two friends were shot and
killed. On the day in '96 when Mattie arrived to bring him home from Ethan
Allen, he made her a promise: I'm gonna make you proud. "Anybody can talk a
good game when they get out of prison," he says now. "But they don't follow
through. I prayed to God to show me a way."
Butler's first step was connecting with Jameel Ghuari, who ran Racine's Bray
Center for at-risk kids. Ghuari met Caron when the kid was 11, running the
streets. He reached out, but Caron didn't reach back. The week after he got
out of prison, though, Caron went to see Ghuari and asked for guidance. Ghuari
hooked Caron up with a local AAU team. By the time he was 18, he was winning
MVP honors over Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles in the Spiece AAU
tournament at Purdue while leading his team to the title.
Ghuari urged Butler to get the rest of his life together, and Caron
listened. When Washington Park High School wouldn't admit him after his
release because he was a juvenile offender, he worked full-time at a Burger
King and attended a local technical college under an assumed name. After one
semester, he showed the school board his grades: all B's. Park admitted him.
Says Ghuari, "Caron started to understand the difference between what he
wanted and what he needed. He made tough choices."
When he ran out of eligibility in '98, he packed his bags for prep
powerhouse Maine Central Institute in rural Pittsfield, Maine, to ball for Max
Good, a self-described hard-ass. Good would ride him so viciously in
practice that Good's wife, sitting in the stands, would put her head in her
hands to hide her tears. Then, after practice, Good would invite Butler into
his room, and Caron would sit and listen to the coach talk: about life, hoops,
his golf handicap, whatever. "He could have chosen a path of lesser
resistance," says Good. "But I think he wanted the path of most resistance. He
was dying for what he got here."
Two years later, Butler had his pick of D1 schools. He chose UConn and
Calhoun, who, like Good, was a hard-ass with an open-door policy. For two
years, without fail, Caron would show up at Calhoun's office before practice
every day to talk about life, basketball and golf handicaps. "I pushed the
living hell out of him," says Calhoun. "And he bought into everything I was
selling. And by this year, we had the best player in America."
So who pushes Butler now? Says Caron, "Good, Ghuari, Calhoun -- they're people
who are going to be in your life every day." Butler is pounding his fists now.
"They pushed me. Now I know how to push myself. I have that voice in my
head, like Rocky had with Mickey: One more round, champ. One more round."
***
Walking out of the mall, with his sharp new $500 ensemble -- black jacket,
black pants, black shoes -- slung over his shoulder, Caron explains why he's
not about to apologize for his past. "Why did I do what I did?" he says, voice
rising. "Why does a child poop his Pampers when he's 3? There's no way to
answer that." Caron is not angry. Just perplexed. A few hours later, he
revisits the subject. He is calm and more thoughtful now. "When you're in an
urban community, your dreams are small," he says. "I had no idea what I was
doing. I got into more than I could handle."
Then he adds, "Only God can judge me."
Not entirely true, of course; the NBA will pass judgment too. Butler is
fully aware of this. He says at one point, "Don't tell anyone I'm listening to
Best of Both Worlds [the collaboration between Jay-Z and R. Kelly, an
alleged sex offender]. Don't want anyone getting the wrong idea." So how,
then, will the NBA judge Caron Butler? "His character is what separates him,
" says one scout. "It's what makes him a great prospect, instead of just a
good prospect." But what about ... Before the question is finished, the
scout says, "Strength through adversity." This is, in fact, the consensus:
Butler's past is not a weakness. It's a strength.
And so Caron's mission to become the NBA's best (yes, he's serious about this)
begins. He has already picked out the suit that he'll wear to the draft: black
Armani, nothing flashy, tastefully done. Ghuari, Mattie and his fianc嶪,
Audrea, will be at his table. So will Camry, now 7, and his son, Caron Jr., 2.
(Both of his kids live with their mothers, with whom he stays in touch.)
Caron's eyes wander wistfully just thinking about draft night. "It will be
hard," he says. "It's a dream come true. I don't know. I might break down."
His eyes swell. He rubs away the mist. "I may come off as a big, tough dude,
" he says. "But I'm a very sensitive guy."
Yes, he's feeling it. Hard.
This article appears in the June 24 issue of ESPN The Magazine.
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