Racine native Caron Butler dishes on his youthful missteps, NBA life and time in Milwaukee

Dave Kallmann
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Veteran forward Caron Butler, a native of Racine, returned home for one season with the Milwaukee Bucks. He played for nine NBA teams over 15 seasons.

NBA veteran and Racine native Caron Butler formally announced his retirement from basketball Tuesday via The Players’ Tribune.

Among the many topics Butler touched upon in his story, he recalled his troubled youth in his hometown, an introduction to Miami that turned from splashy to humbling and his return to Wisconsin to play for the Milwaukee Bucks.

Butler, a first-round pick by the Heat in 2002, played for 15 seasons with nine teams, the last a 17-game run in 2015-’16 with the Sacramento Kings.

A 6-foot-7 forward, Butler was an all-star twice with the Washington Wizards. He was part of the Dallas Mavericks team that won the 2010-’11 NBA title, although he missed half the season and the playoffs with a ruptured patellar tendon.

Butler was obtained by the Bucks in a trade with the Los Angeles Clippers in August 2013 and was welcomed home in a tearful pep rally at Racine Park High School, where he had played for one season. Butler played in 34 games with Milwaukee, averaging 11.0 points per game, before the Bucks bought out his contract.

Butler started at Park before finishing high school at Maine Central Institute in Pittsfield, Maine, and then went on to the University of Connecticut, where he was co-Big East Player of the Year in his second and final season.

Last fall Butler joined ESPN as a college basketball analyst.

Here are highlights of what Butler said in The Players’ Tribune piece:

On his introduction to the NBA

"My mom’s first time flying on an airplane scared her half to death. I think she still might secretly blame Pat Riley.

“It was one day after the NBA draft, in 2002, and we were 30,000 feet in the air, somewhere between Wisconsin and Florida. The Heat had just drafted me. Pat Riley had sent the team’s private plane. If I close my eyes I can still picture my mom, Mattie, in her cushy seat, looking at me and looking out the window, back and forth. This combination of immense pride and absolute terror.

“ 'The whole plane is ours?!' she was saying. She couldn’t believe it. It was just our family — me, my mom, my fiancée, my brother — and two representatives from the Heat.

“It blew my mind, too, but I was trying to play it cool. Getting into my seat, I tried to remember to breathe out of my nose. The team representative showed me and my brother where Alonzo Mourning and LaPhonso Ellis sat when the team traveled. It didn’t seem real.”

On Miami and the Heat

"There wasn’t a party waiting for me in Miami when I got to the gym on the first day. It wasn’t clubbin’ on South Beach with cigars and all that.

“It was, ‘Your locker is over there. If you arrive to practice an hour early — you’re late. You should start working out tomorrow morning. And what was your name again?’ "

On avoiding Miami's temptations

“I was lucky that I’d already been through a lot in my life. Miami’s reputation for nightlife could’ve derailed some young guys, but it never worried me. I’d had my first child at age 14. I was arrested more than a dozen times in my teenage years. At age 16, I was incarcerated after police found drugs and a pistol in my locker at school. I almost lost everything on more than one occasion, and I lost a lot of people close to me at a very young age. So I wasn’t looking for a good time, not by the time I made the NBA. By then, basketball was something I was going to protect at all costs. I’d come too far to let the noise distract me.”

On learning from Riley

“One thing he did that I’ll never forget it that he would leave notes in my locker. I’d find them before practice some days. Sometimes it was a note about a specific play or drill that I needed to work on, and sometimes it was a motivational phrase. The notes were never more than like a sentence or two, but every time I got one it had such a big effect on me. It was like I had a top-secret communication channel with the godfather of basketball himself — like we had our own language. I felt like every single note made me a better player in some small way."

On the Bucks

“It was always my dream to be able to play in a Bucks uniform. John Hammond and Senator Kohl made that happen. Honestly, everybody in Milwaukee. There’s nothing like playing in your home state. Thank you all for being a part of that experience.”