http://www.palmbeachpost.com/sports/content/auto/epaper/ editions/friday/sports_0488f72496bdb1b3003e.html Crouse: Game fun again for Heat's Butler By Karen Crouse, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Friday, April 23, 2004 MIAMI -- Caron Butler's hands are quicker than a hummingbird's wings. If Butler wasn't playing basketball for the Heat, he could be dealing cards in Atlantic City. The Heat forward has eight steals in two games in Miami's first-round playoff series against the Hornets. He also has 11 defensive rebounds. It doesn't take Sgt. Joe Friday to figure out that in the case of the Hornets' missing offense, Butler looms as a prime suspect. "The one stat with him that I look for on the box score every night is his rebounding (and) I think he has really stepped up," said Heat coach Stan Van Gundy. "When he's getting in there battling on the boards, especially as small as we are, it makes a tremendous difference." It's a funny game, basketball. After undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his left knee in the fall, Butler spent the better part of the season struggling to get in the flow of the Heat's offense. Now here he is, injecting himself into the Hornets' offense with the greatest of ease. "My defense got much better over the course of being injured and trying to get back," Butler said Thursday. "I had to do other things better. I had to concentrate on my defense to get playing time out there in the beginning." It's a fickle game, basketball. Last year as a rookie, the 6-foot-7 Butler reached double figures in scoring in 65 of the 68 games in which he appeared and led the team in field goals attempted. He was the straw that stirred the offense, and lest anybody doubted it, it was written in these pages at last season's conclusion that Butler in 2003-04 would "get more responsibility as the Heat develops an offense to showcase his talents." That was the plan. Then the Heat drafted Dwyane Wade and signed Lamar Odom and Rafer Alston and Butler badly injured his left knee during training camp. The Heat resorted to Plan B, which did not stand for Butler. His injury and the infusion of fresh talent reduced the Heat's main cog to a spare part. The reality was this: If Butler wanted the ball in his hands, he was going to have to take it away from the other team. It required a major shift in his mind-set. It was like telling Cher that if she wanted to keep wearing those haute couture gowns, she was going to have to start sewing them herself. It's a fiendish game, basketball. As Butler was rehabilitating his knee, it got back to him that players and people outside the Heat family were saying he would end up being the Heat's weakest link. "A lot of people really doubted if I could adjust," Butler said. "I heard secondhand that people were saying, 'I don't think these guys can play together.' I was saying, 'Let's wait until I get healthy. Then we'll see.' " He showed his critics, whoever they were. Butler's energy is what the Heat has plugged into during its current 19-4 run. In that span he has produced four of his five double-digit rebounding performances. The difference? "Just being back healthy," Butler said, "and really understanding my niche on this team. With new guys on the team, everything kind of developed when I wasn't around. Now we've all adjusted to one another and everybody is feeding off one another." It's a fulfilling game, basketball. The harder Butler has worked on his defense, the easier it has been to contribute on offense. "So many good things happen when you play defense and you do it right," Butler said. You have no idea how gratifying it is for Van Gundy to hear Butler say that. "Caron has" -- Van Gundy corrected himself -- "had a tendency in the past to want to leak out in the fastbreak. His mind-set was an offensive-oriented mind-set. When his mind-set is rebounding and playing with a lot of energy his whole game just comes together. It seems to me that it always works that way." Buried like so much confetti in a pile in the fist-pumping, beat-thumping post-game celebration of Wade's decisive shot in Game 1 was Butler's deflection of Steve Smith's inbounds pass with 1.3 seconds remaining. Butler looked at Smith's eyes and read his intentions perfectly. Butler's last-second stand wasn't lost on his teammates, though. In the fifth minute of Game 2, Butler was trailing Wade on a break. Wade had room enough to make the basket himself. Instead, he looked over his shoulder and flipped the ball back to Butler, who dunked the ball for two of his 18 points. "I just thought that would be a great opportunity to reward him," Wade said Thursday, "especially for the defense he put on the night before." It's a funny game, basketball. A season that started like a nightmare is ending like a dream. "I feel much healthier than I've ever felt in my life," Butler said. "It's just unbelievable. And now we're playing the best basketball we have all year. It's great. I know from this stage on my game is just going to get better and better. I look forward to all the challenges." Butler had forgotten how fun basketball can be. Winning has a way of making all the bad memories fall away. [email protected] --

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