Caron Butler knows he can score, and has the numbers to prove it. This season he plans to make it much harder for the guy he's covering to do the same thing.
"It's a new beginning, obviously, and something beautiful," Butler said at the Washington Wizards' training camp in Richmond.
Butler, entering his eighth NBA season, said with a tip of the cap to age - he's 29 now - he altered his diet in the offseason, started eating breakfast and trimmed 10 or 11 pounds from his 6-7 body.
His goal is to be the "best defensive player that I possibly can be." He and the Wizards under new coach Flip Saunders want to leave their 19-victory 2008-09 season in the past.
"I'm going to have a lot of key assignments this year and I look forward to them," Butler said. "I pride myself on that, and having my body prepared and strong enough to be able to enforce my will on the game defensively, so that's what I've really been concentrating on."
If the approach sounds familiar, it's because it is, albeit with one big change.
"Now it's just more of a serious approach," Butler said. "Usually I take the matchup because it's given to me, but now I'm really keying in and focusing in and studying the matchup and learning the defensive schemes."
The Wizards have a history of talking about playing tougher defense before the season - then failing to do it once the games count. Last season they ranked 24th in the NBA, allowing an average of 103.5 points, and their opponents' .482 field goal percentage was the second highest in the league. Only Sacramento was worse at .483.
Saunders, hired in the offseason after interim coach Ed Tapscott was not retained, made challenging Butler on the defensive end one of his offseason projects.
"I talked to him, and I thought he had the ability to be an all-league defensive-type player on the perimeter," Saunders said. "He's as good as anybody. He's got the ability to be a stopper."
Besides a new coach, the Wizards will enter the new season with a healthy Gilbert Arenas.
Once among the league's top scorers, Arenas has played in only 15 games over the past two seasons after three knee surgeries. In camp, his knee has held up fine and he's been slowed more by a dislocated middle finger on his left hand that caused him to sit out scrimmages.
Arenas' return changes Butler's role, teammate Antawn Jamison said, from the guy who averaged a career-best 20.8 points last season to one who still scores, but with a defense-first mentality.
Said Jamison: "With everybody healthy, the key is doing what he does best, and that's be a good defender and definitely being one of the best offensive players in the league."
In Butler's mind, he's also showing his younger teammates how to play the game.
"If you see your leaders doing it, taking charges and diving on the floor and things like that, you've got to do it," he said. "Otherwise you're not going to be able to be out there."
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