When Caron Butler’s NBA playing career came to an end in 2016, he didn’t necessarily envision himself returning to the league as a coach. As a father of five and businessman with plenty to keep him busy in retirement, Butler had enough going on.
But Butler’s thinking changed somewhere along the way, as he just completed his third season as a Heat assistant coach on Erik Spoelstra’s staff and served as the Heat summer league head coach for the first time this year.
“I didn’t know that I was going to fall in love with the game and the teaching and all those things,” Butler said to the Miami Herald, with the Heat closing this year’s summer league on Sunday against the Portland Trail Blazers in Las Vegas (8 p.m., ESPN 2). “But it’s something that I just can’t see myself not doing now because of the connection with the players and seeing them get it and the information that you instill in them. That feeling is priceless.”
Butler, 43, initially tried to remain around the sport as a retired player by becoming a broadcaster. He joined ESPN as a college game analyst in 2017 before joining Turner Sports as an NBA analyst in 2018, while also working as a studio analyst for Spectrum SportsNet’s coverage of the Los Angeles Lakers and occasionally as a game analyst for the Washington Wizards during the 2019-20 season.
Then Spoelstra called Butler in the fall of 2020 shortly after the Heat’s run to the NBA Finals in the Walt Disney world bubble during the COVID-19 pandemic. There was an opening on the Heat’s coaching staff following Dan Craig’s departure to the Los Angeles Clippers and Spoelstra wanted to know if Butler was interested in the job.
“He’s like, ‘Hey, have you ever thought about coaching?’” Butler recalled. “I was like, ‘I actually have.’ I mentor a lot of people, a lot of individuals come out to our house. D-Wade (Dwyane Wade), we’re all friends, we bounce ideas off each other business wise, strategizing and doing all those things.
“And over the course of the years, the amount of people that I’ve given information to, I was just like: ‘Man, I can be on the bench on a staff in a locker room doing all those things and really moving the needle in real time in their process.’ I’m just glad that I pivoted and came to the Heat organization.”
Butler joined Spoelstra’s staff shortly before the start of the 2020-21 season and has been one of the Heat’s top assistants since. The three assistant coaches who have sat alongside Spoelstra in the front row of the Heat’s bench during this three-year stretch are Chris Quinn, Malik Allen and Butler.
Butler’s transition into coaching has been made easier by the fact that his first NBA experience has come with the Heat, an organization that he knows well and also knows him well. Butler was drafted by Miami with the 10th overall pick in 2002, spending two seasons with the Heat before being traded to the Los Angeles Lakers in 2004 as part of a package to acquire Shaquille O’Neal.
“It was a dream come true because this is the team that probably did the most intel on me during my draft process and everything, so they knew me best,” Butler said of breaking into coaching with the Heat. “They know who I am and they know what I’m all about. So it was an easy transition and they put me in a position where I could just flourish. That was huge for me.”
This is just the start, though. Butler wants to become a head coach in the NBA one day.
“That’s the dream,” he said of that goal. “I’m continuing to be in basketball school and learning from some of the best minds to ever coach the game of basketball.”
It didn’t take long for Butler to realize that coaching was for him. He noted that “probably about four months in [to his Heat coaching tenure] that I just knew this is what I want to do.”
“That’s when you know it’s something that you really, really want to do, when you can’t see yourself not doing it,” Butler added. “I got to that point, where I just can’t see myself not trying to come up with solutions to some of these problems and some of these things that other teams pose to us. It’s like, I got to continue to wrap my mind around solutions and that’s the fun part of it. As a competitor, that’s the beauty of it.”
Butler’s first experience as a summer league head coach is one he’ll always remember. It’s an opportunity he didn’t take for granted.
“It means everything,” Butler said. “The Godfather (Pat Riley), the Arison family, Spo, my mentor and my brother, and the coaching staff just really pouring into me over the last three seasons and giving me this opportunity. It means everything in the world.
“Even though it’s just a summer league process and it’s an audition for a lot of guys and it’s another step forward for the guys who are already under our umbrella, I’m going to be connected with this group forever because it’s my first coaching group. Being a head coach and being at the helm, I’ll never forget this.”
