In professional sport, there are destinies like no other. This is the case of Caron Butlerthe former winger of the Heat, the Clippers and the Mavericks and who has just extended his lease on Erik Spoelstra's staff.
Before being a lottery pick and All-Star, Caron Butler grew up in Racine, Wisconsin, and a documentary then his autobiography, published in 2015 and prefaced by Kobe Bryant, he revealed his past as a drug dealer and gang member. At the age of 15, he had already been arrested around fifteen times and he was in and out of prison for several weeks or several months.
Until one time too many when the future NBA champion with the Mavericks was caught selling cocaine in his high school: he would be incarcerated for a year in a high security prison.
Prison as a trigger
It was precisely during a stay in prison that Caron Butler realized that he was really gifted at basketball, even though he had only played informally until then. This is what he tells Udonis Haslem and Mike Miller in the The OGs podcast.
“To be completely honest, I didn’t know I was good until I got locked up.”he explains. “There was a guy called Sir Ping. He was like the superintendent of all the units. It was Juno's. This is the place where I was locked up at the beginning. And he's like, 'Dude, you're tall, I think you could play.'
Caron Butler goes one-on-one with fellow inmates and shows himself to be talented. But above all he realizes that he is playing against criminals and that these matches are the subject of bets.
“He made me play one-on-one against all the inmates, guys who are serving life sentences or whatever… There was all the time in the world. And I'm playing against these guys, and they're like, 'Damn, you're good!' »remembers the winger. “That’s when I said to myself, ‘I’m better than all these guys.’”
The following ? Caron Butler will delve into faith to leave the streets. He would prove himself in AAU and play in high school before joining UConn in college. It was under the orders of Jim Calhoun that he became one of the country's greatest prospects, and was subsequently selected 10th by the Heat. It was in 2002.
