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Ira Winderman: The story of Caleb Martin, J. Cole, Caron Butler, a Heat tryout, and paying it forward

ira winderman, south florida sun-sentinel
·8 min read
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MIAMI – Sometimes the second verse can carry more weight than the first.

For Caleb Martin, that essentially is the story of the resurrection of his NBA career with the Miami Heat.

To get to the story of how Martin landed with the Heat in the 2021 offseason first is to go back to 2011 and the J. Cole song “Autograph.”

Included in the lyrics from the Grammy-winning rapper:

“Caron Butler I’m a wizard if he doesn’t know

“It’s young Simba, I’m ballin’ ’til the buzzer blow.”

At the time Butler was a season removed from a five-year tenure with the Washington Wizards, having previously established a friendship during that tenure with the singer, songwriter and producer.

It was a connection that eventually would pay dividends . . . for Martin.

Fast forward to August 2021, when Martin was told of his release from the Hornets, his basketball future in doubt, with little more than a non-guaranteed training-camp invite from the Portland Trail Blazers.

That’s when Cole intervened.

Raised in Fayetteville, N.C., Cole had established a relationship with Martin when Martin, a North Caroline native, played at North Carolina State, with that mentorship continuing through Martin’s tenure with the Hornets, including work with a mutual trainer.

“He’s got a million things going on,” Martin said this past week. “He could be doing a million things. But it also just shows you that it’s bigger than basketball. That’s my homie, that’s my guy.”

Seeing a friend in need, Cole reached out to Butler, the former Heat forward who is now a Heat assistant coach.

Butler took it from there.

“I’ve known J. Cole for probably 20 years now,” Butler told the Sun Sentinel. “Just listening to his music, his underground music, he mentioned me in one of his songs a long time ago. And he came to a game in D.C, when I was playing with the Wizards and we started talking, chatting. We were both with the same agency, Roc Nation, so that’s how we got connected and we just had a great relationship from there.”

So, no, it wasn’t a case of Cole imposing.

“Caleb was on our shortlist already, from what he had already done in the league,” Butler said of Martin’s time with the Hornets. “And he just happened to become available and we had direct access to him without going through any agent. So I was like, ‘Man, let’s get him here and see what he looks like.’ ”

Tryout granted.

“I was nervous,” Martin said. “Just because I felt like that was my last opportunity. I was on the way out, I felt like. And they had some spots filled, so I just wanted to make sure I left the gym with them knowing who I was, and making them feel like they couldn’t leave me walking out the door without being on the roster. So I was definitely nervous, definitely a back-against-the-wall type of feeling. But I feel like that’s how I operate the best.”

The purpose of the session was not necessarily a tryout. It instead was the Heat’s weekly offseason Wednesday open run on their practice court. The sessions largely were staged by the Heat to give center Bam Adebayo real-time experience in expanding his post game.

Tryout aced.

“We were doing open runs just to develop Bam on his face-up game, stuff like that,” Butler said. “So Wednesdays we would do like a three-hour open run, and Caleb made it down just in time to get on the court.

“He was amazing. I think his activity, his big-muscle stuff, like his rebounding, deflections, he actually dove on the floor. He took a charge in a pick-up game. That’s not normal. That was something that jumped out to me. I recall him hitting a game winner and then he had like a crazy tip dunk that kind of got Riles [Heat President Pat Riley], like, ‘OK.’ ”

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A two-way contract followed ahead of camp, converted to a standard deal at midseason. Then, last summer, the payoff was a three-year, $20.4 million free-agent contract.

“I think about that day all the time,” Martin said, with his relationship with Cole initially chronicled by the Charlotte Observer. “It was a wild couple of weeks. And those couple of days leading up to that scrimmage was really intense. But all that has prepared me for moments like this. And I think about that all the time.”

As does his musical mentor, the 38-year-old Grammy winner.

“He keeps up with every game,” Martin said of Cole. “He’s watching just like my family’s watching. He’s hitting me up just like my family’s hitting me up. I talk to him all the time. He talks to my trainers all the time, my brother [twin Cody Martin, who plays for the Hornets].

“It’s all love.”

And a moment seized.

“Relationships are key in all this stuff,” Butler said of Cole opening the door. “But the preparation and opportunity is a whole other thing. Obviously you have to be talented, and obviously Caleb had that.”

So after what Cole did in reaching out to Butler and then what Butler did to help facilitate that tryout, Butler said one part of the process remains.

“I told him,” Butler said, “when you’re in that position, and you will be, give that blessing to somebody else, as well. That’s what it’s all about. Pay it forward.”

IN THE LANE

THE OTHER SIDE: A Florida Marlin at the start of his Major League Baseball career, MLB Network personality Kevin Millar made clear where his civic loyalty stands after the Celtics fell behind 3-0 to the Heat and then won Game 4 at Kaseya Center. At that point, Millar, a member of the Boston Red Sox team that overcame a 3-0 deficit in the American League Championship Series against the New York Yankees on the way to winning the 2004 World Series, took to Twitter to post, “All right Boston, Kevin Millar here. Celtics, what I’m talking about is we got to believe. We were down 0-3, now we got one in Miami. This is Game 5 at the Garden. I wanna hear you ‘Cowboy Up!’ Let’s go!” Then again, perhaps Millar had probable cause, considering that after the 2002 season, the Marlins tried to sell Millar to the Chunichi Dragons of the Japanese Central League, with Boston intervening with a waiver claim. “Cowboy up,” was the phrase Millar coined in the Red Sox clubhouse during the 2003 playoffs.

PERSPECTIVE OFFERED: If ever perspective was offered ahead of a game in a meaningful and sobering context, it came from Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla ahead of Thursday night’s Game 5 against the Heat at TD Garden. That’s when he reflected on a moment ahead of that victory. “I met three girls under the age of 21 with terminal cancer, and I thought I was helping them by talking to them, and they were helping me,” he said. “So having an understanding about what life is really all about and watching a girl dying and smiling and enjoying her life, that’s what it’s really all about, and having that faith and understanding.” He said it allowed him to take true stock even amid a series deficit. “The other thing is you always hear people give glory to God and say, ‘thank you,’ when they’re holding a trophy,” he said. “But you never really hear it in times like this. So, for me, it’s an opportunity to just sit right where I’m at and just be faithful. That’s what it’s about.”

HE’S NOT . . . BUT: No, LeBron James isn’t retiring, regardless of his reflective moment in the wake of his Los Angeles Lakers being swept out of the playoffs by the Denver Nuggets. But if there is NBA closure for James, 38, it would allow the Heat to move forward with the inevitable of retiring his No. 6 Heat jersey and hang it alongside the Big Three jerseys of Dwyane Wade (No. 3) and Chris Bosh (No. 1) at Kaseya Center. That, in turn, would allow the Heat to then consider other options, be it Goran Dragic (No. 7) or merely waiting out Jimmy Butler (No. 22). It also could open the door for consideration of candidates from before the 1995 start of the Pat Riley era.

STILL GOING: While Heat captain Udonis Haslem is calling it quits after 20 seasons, the future of former Heat forward Andre Iguodala appears less clear, as he ponders a 20th season. Iguodala, 39, who rejoined the Golden State Warriors after helping the Heat to the 2020 NBA Finals, has been giving mixed signals about what’s next. For now, there merely has been a cryptic tweet of, “No,” from Iguodala. Meaning? “That’s the beauty of me expressing myself. That’s art, right?” Iguodala said on his Point Forward podcast. “It can be interpreted in so many ways. It just gets annoying sometimes when people tend to make decisions for you.”

NUMBER

5. Times in NBA playoff history a team has had four 20-point scorers and the opposition none, with that the case in the Heat’s Game 5 loss to the Celtics, when Boston had Derrick White with 24 points, Marcus Smart with 23, and Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown with 21 apiece, while the Heat’s leading scorer was Duncan Robinson with 18. According to ESPN Stats & Info, it is the first time it happened since 2013.