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What Will Caron Butler Bring To The Kings?

By Ti Windisch

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A lot of Sacramento Kings people have (rightly) praised the terrific offseason Vlade Divac has had so far. He’s managed to bring in a lot of talented players and personnel and also seems to have gotten DeMarcus Cousins and George Karl talking again, so he’s clearly doing pretty well so far.

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But one signing that hasn’t gotten its due praise just yet is when Vlade brought in veteran forward Caron Butler on a two-year, $3 million deal in early July. A lot of people (myself shamefully included) jumped to the conclusion that Butler being older meant he wouldn’t see much usage on the Kings and that he’s merely an end-of-the-bench guy.

History dictates otherwise. In his 15 year career Caron Butler has never averaged less than 20 minutes a game, even in half seasons in years he was traded. This dude finds minutes. Early on in his career that could have been because he was a defensive stopper, but that’s certainly no longer true.

He began his career with two consecutive seasons of a great defensive rating of 102, and then proceeded to never touch that number again, averaging a defensive rating of 109 in the 13 seasons since his sophomore campaign. So if it’s not his defense, what’s keeping him so heavily involved in the rotation?

Part of it could be Butler’s emergence as a quality deep threat. In his first eight seasons Butler shot a meh 31.2 percent from beyond the arc. Since then he’s been a 38.3 percent shooter from three-point range. If he’s hovering up around 40 percent from deep he’s going to find time on most teams–that kind of steady marksmanship from the bench often ends up playing a big part in winning close games.

But the biggest reason I like the Butler signing is his leadership. Veteran leadership is sort of a buzzword thrown around whenever an older player is signed, but Caron Butler actually will bring a lot to the Sacramento Kings locker room in his time with the team.

In this great Keith Langlois article specifically dedicated to chronicling Butler’s leadership with the Detroit Pistons (despite Butler spending just one season in Detroit) there are some great quotes and facts that prove Butler is the kind of guy you want to have on your team (much like Willie Cauley-Stein proved a few days ago).

This few paragraphs is essentially one long Butler quote, and it’s a good read for anyone looking to see how he carries himself and thinks about his role on an NBA team:

"“It’s real rewarding. I always told the guys, ‘You owe it to yourself to go out there and represent the name on the back of the jersey as well as on the front and be a professional on and off the court. Do your job, stay the course,’ ” he said. “And I appreciate it more because everybody bought in. They believed in what coach Van Gundy was saying, they believed in my message and my leadership in the locker room. And you could see everybody playing so well because of it. The energy is totally different and I’m just ecstatic about it.”He’s orchestrated two team meetings, one as preseason wound down and one after a November loss to Utah.“I just said, ‘We’re not getting blown out. We’re a possession here, a possession there. It’s not the coverages, it’s our effort. And it’s smart effort.’ I told them the knock on the team last year was not playing four quarters. You look at the scouting report and it may say the team is going to play hard for 24 minutes but if you strike ’em, they’ll fade away and we don’t want to regress in that moment. We want to stand up to that moment, get better and push through it. Over the course of the last five, six games, we started pushing through it and now we’re imposing our will on games and winning.”"

Now that’s the kind of presence that any team could use in the locker room. Aside from just being motivational, it’s obvious Butler has a smart basketball mind too–that’s probably where a lot of the respect for him comes from. That, and the fact that like I said before, he can still play:

"Butler played a key role in Sunday’s win over Sacramento, the fifth straight for the surging Pistons. It wound up a 19-point victory – in line with the previous four games, bumping the average margin of victory over that span to 18.2 – but it was a seven-point game when Butler packed three huge plays into a two-minute span of the fourth quarter: a long 2-point jump shot, a triple and a diving steal that led to Andre Drummond‘s three-point play.As Van Gundy emphasized when Butler signed as a free agent last July, he wanted him for his leadership but also for his play. Tough to lead from the rear. If Butler wasn’t good enough to earn minutes, his leadership influence inevitably would be muted.“You can be a voice on the bench, but you’ve still got to go out there and sacrifice your body and your time and they’ve got to see you in here doing the little things, seeing you on the court performing,” Butler said. “Lord willing, I’ll continue to be able to do this. Last night took a lot out of me – that floor didn’t give.”"

Butler still goes out and competes in the NBA, and even if he’s lost some quickness over the years he’s gained that three-point range and he never lost his fiery spirit it seems. Don’t be surprised to see Butler continue his streak of averaging 20 minutes a game in Sacramento–he’s not the type to stop bringing valuable contributions to a team on the court.

Or off of it, for that matter. After spending just training camp with the Pistons, Butler was “the overwhelming choice” for team captain according to that Langlois piece. Although in his interview with Grant Napear the other day Vlade Divac said he wanted DeMarcus Cousins to step into a leadership role, Caron Butler just might end up the leader of the Kings in 2016.

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