The Huskies were defeated by the Maryland Terrapins late in the tournament. He was named co-Big East player of the year, a second-team All-American, and led the Huskies to the Elite 8 of the NCAA basketball tournament. His second season at Connecticut was even better – averaging 20.3 points and 7.5 rebounds per game leading the Huskies to both regular season and tournament Big East titles. After a stellar freshman season averaging 15.6 points and 7.6 per game, Butler took home gold with the United States in the 2001 FIBA World Championship for Young Men. Butler made an immediate impact the day he stepped on the court-leading the team in points and rebounds per game. In 1999, Butler received a scholarship to attend the University of Connecticut to play for the Connecticut Huskies men’s basketball team under head coach Jim Calhoun. The Big East was where Butler wanted to play, and that’s exactly where he played. Now “the man” at Maine Central, Caron Butler was getting lured to big-name colleges by big-name coaches. Though he was a standout at Maine Central, the farthest his team ever finished a season was a loss in the State Finals. His averages jumped seven points and one rebound 26 points and 13 rebounds per game.
During his sophomore year at the school, Butler was now catching Big East teams’ eyes with his outstanding play. In his first year at the school, he was considered one of the most promising young players coming through the program - averaging 19 points and 12 rebounds at Maine Central. Looking back about fifteen years later, Officier Geller remembers, “I was gonna nail this kid.” He continues at a ‘Champions of Change Law Enforcement and Youth’ meeting event at the White House, “We up executing the warrant and I get inside and I start talking to this young man.”īutler attended Maine Central Institute Prep School from 1998-1999. The 2x NBA All-Star could have faced up to ten years in prison. With tears in his eyes and burns on his hands from his job at Burger King, Butler explained it was a false call and he was most definitely clean - Officer Rick Geller did not charge Butler with a crime. Butler’s dreams of playing basketball were not going to be tarnished. Police Officer Rick Geller obtained a search warrant and instantly went over to Butler’s house with Butler’s previous rap sheet, the officer thought this was an easy bust. Story goes, a sick, bedridden Butler with a throw up bucket in his reach was suddenly stunned when police officers burst in searching for drugs. One man’s decision to let a now-clean Butler off on a home invasion drug-bust allowed his future to live another day. Drug-free and bound for success on the basketball court, nothing was stopping Caron Butler.īut, in January of 1998, Butler’s future was almost completed shattered.
Butler played on Amateur Athletic Union teams as a youngster, and played a few years at Racine Park High School in Racine, Wisconsin dominating the competition.
11 months later, clean, drug-free Butler took his basketball skills and ran with them. How was Caron Butler introduced to basketball, anyway? While incarcerated in a juvenile detention center in his early teenage years, Butler embraced the game of basketball more than anything in his life. A life in the ghetto is not easy, and people who grew up in such a grueling place either don’t grow to see their elder years, or stay there for life.īecoming successful while living in the ghetto is tough, but has been done before. Around this time-instead of proving himself on the basketball court-he had to prove himself on the streets as a gang member and drug dealer.Ĭaron Butler has seen it all: friends killed, gang fights, arrested 15 times before the age of 15. In his 2015 book, Tuff Juice: My Journey from the Streets to the NBA, the one-time NBA champion describes and tells all about his troubled life in the ghetto before being drafted to the NBA. This article isn’t about how great of a player Caron Butler once was, but the unbelievably delinquent childhood Butler once knew as a young man growing up in the mean streets of Racine, Wisconsin.
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