This collaboration between NBA All-Star Caron Butler and YA author Justin A. Reynolds is Butler’s second book and the first in a planned series. On its surface, Shot Clock is a story about basketball, but at its heart it’s about life, family, and how giving young people the opportunity to see the world beyond their block can be life-affirming. The story centers on Tony, whose best friend Dante is a neighborhood hero and AAU basketball champion. When Dante is killed by a police officer, Tony looks to carry on his legacy. The story touches on a number of social issues, including mental illness and toxic masculinity, in between vivid scenes of action on the court as Tony learns he can become a hero without following the exact same path as Dante. We spoke with the duo about the importance of giving opportunities to those who are often underserved and guiding the next generation towards greatness.
How did this collaboration come about?
Justin Reynolds: My editor [Ben Rosenthal] knew I was a big basketball fan. So it was my opportunity to get to know Caron. They put us on the phone to see how we would gel and everything that I heard come out of Caron’s mouth was exactly how I felt. Obviously Caron could write a basketball story all day but he wanted to do more than that. He wanted to write a story about community, young people, and something that gave people purpose and meaning. He wanted it to be about a kid who makes the team in an unconventional way. He becomes a statistician. I thought that was a dope way to dive into the story collection.
Caron Butler: For me, I thought the pick and roll with me and Justin was paramount. It felt real. I felt his messaging through some of the work he did prior. It led to us connecting and talking. The energy was right. We just moved the needle and went down that path together.
In a book that emphasizes the importance of teamwork, what is something you think was bolstered by your collaborator on this project? Or was it harmonious throughout?
Reynolds: We were very in lockstep in terms of what we wanted the story to be about and the message we wanted to get across. The thing I really appreciate about Caron is he’ll forget more about basketball than I’ll ever know and so talking to him about the finer details, especially in AAU which I am not as immersed in as Caron, ensured we had the expertise to get it right. We wanted it to be accessible to those who were not familiar with that world.
How much of the lead character of Tony is biographical?
Butler: Tony was a character that we created between the two of us. Traditionally, Tony’s role might have been a figure on the team like the water boy. But we wanted to show his other gifts and other niches that you can possess to be a part of something bigger than yourself and how you can impact winning and go down that path. Just imagine the different lanes we can go down in the future in the series by talking about where the journey of Tony goes. I thought that was dope and that was solely Justin’s idea right there. “How about if he’s into numbers?” I thought that was brilliant, like he threw the lob and dunked it to his own self [laughs]!
That is interesting in the framework of career longevity or arc because a statistician goes beyond that trope of the star player and may be just as crucial as being a player who can handle the rock.
Reynolds: If you think about it, he’s on the assistant coach track. You see the game from a way that a player isn’t seeing it. You’re breaking down in between quarters and thinking about how the game plan we came in with isn’t working and how can we use this new information that we are getting in real time. That’s coaching. But what kid would be satisfied with being a statistician? And that’s how Tony feels initially. He thinks it’s kind of corny.
Butler: To Justin’s point, people who want to go into coaching, you’re going to have to have a career with some kind of analytical backdrop. When you think about the league prior to George Floyd and all the other stuff that was happening in the world, the pillar of the association felt like you had to have more Black and Brown former players at the helm. So now you have 15–16 Black coaches in the league. And then from the executive standpoint, the percentages there are increasing now. This is going to be the new wave for athletes. And in no book that I’ve read have I seen that narrative.
Can you discuss the importance of travel in Shot Clock?
Reynolds: A lot of people don’t have the opportunity to travel because they don’t have the resources to. So we thought the way to break down some of the barriers and to understand yourself and your place in community, you need to be able to experience as many different areas and people as possible. What better way to do that than through basketball? We talked a lot about basketball as a tool or a means to accomplish those things. It ultimately gives you a better understanding of yourself. It gives you direction.
Butler: Just to piggyback off what Justin is saying, I’ve personally experienced that feeling myself being on a traveling team. These are kids who are buying into something that is larger than themselves because they are seeing it for the first time. Justin hears this from me all the time: seeing is believing. That phrase sticks with me and that’s exactly what’s happening with these kids in Shot Clock.
Was there a particular approach you both discussed as far as balancing out the social justice and resilience narrative within the book?
Butler: I thought it was extremely important to add that social justice element. This was right in line with what Justin was thinking. It was showing the young people becoming the new ancestors and leading. You have to listen to the kids. The kids are the closest things to angels and they’re obviously the closest thing to God as far as purity. They’re pure to a fault and these kids are stepping up and speaking their truth and changing the narrative in real time because they are coming from an authentic real space of hurt and telling their reality. I thought that was powerful in the book, and it was inspired by what I have been seeing in real time in my community.
Reynolds: The character of Coach was largely crafted around Caron. Here is someone I see doing the same thing that Coach is doing and personifying the spirit of the story [providing guidance to the young men on his team], which is why I wanted to do this book. I felt like a lot of people talk the talk in front of the camera, but what are you doing behind the scenes? Also, to speak about something along the lines of social justice, we wanted to spotlight a Black family that was working hard and really trying to do the right thing. In thinking about Dante, the kid who was killed before the story begins, he did all the right things and still his life was taken tragically. We talked a lot about pride. There’s a pride in who you are and where you live. Taking care of the piece of earth that you have and trying to do the right thing by the kids who live on your block and looking after each other as a family. We also really wanted to spotlight the relationship that Tony has with his Dad. His Dad was working all the time and we wanted to talk about that father-son relationship and how that can be a bit tricky to navigate and to be vulnerable. Coach is another example of a father figure but he’s doing it in a different way.
The other thing I wanted to talk about in the story is mental health. Tony’s mom is dealing with depression. She’s gone for a good portion of the story. I think that it’s a thing that we still have not gotten as comfortable talking about as we should in the Black community. As a Black man, I’ll say I think we still have some work to do in terms of helping people to not only feel free and open to talk about our mental health status, but also to talk about how all of us are impacted. The important thing is to bring compassion and empathy toward people and recognize that we all have our battles and our crosses to bear, but if we have a sense of love and unity we can hit those hurdles together.
Caron, what has been tougher: the basketball court, or writing about life on and around the basketball court?
Butler: I would easily say writing about life and your ideals. Playing the game of basketball is first nature; it’s all instinctual. This is something new, but it was definitely something that I was passionate about. It became very therapeutic for me to tell stories and shine light on situations because I’m not a hostage to a narrative.
What are some things that that you would like readers to take away from Shot Clock?
Butler: Hope, belief, love, trauma, and losses. I think it sums it up in all those facets. Ultimately, it’s a feel-good story. It teaches you about all those things because in the society we live in everything is so microwaveable: everything has quick fixes. This is a process; it’s a journey, and obviously it’s going to be a series of books.
Reynolds: Whatever it is that you’re dreaming of, even though right now it might seem too far away or too unattainable—you don’t have the money or resources—you can get there through desire, hunger, and passion. But it’s not all on you. It’s incumbent upon the rest of us to provide the path to help you get there and to help you reach your dreams. A lot of problems that we see in the world, we caused them, so we owe young people the opportunity to pursue their passions and to be able to carry on the change that they are making in this world.
Shot Clock by Caron Butler and Justin A. Reynolds. HarperCollins/Tegen, $16.99 Sept. 6 ISBN 978-0-06-306959-6
