Behind the mad scramble to get Lamont Butler, the ‘linchpin’ of this UK basketball team

Now six months removed from the chaos, it might be easy to forget just how frenetic those first few days of the Mark Pope era actually were.

The weeklong transition that Kentucky basketball went through — from John Calipari’s stunning departure to Pope’s electric introduction — was wild enough, but what followed brought its own unique level of madness.

Pope showed up for work the morning after his Rupp Arena debut with the unenviable task of building a college basketball team from scratch. He had no assistant coaches. He had no players. He had a rabid fan base eagerly following his every move. There was no time to waste.

Nearly two weeks later, folks were getting antsy.

Only three players had publicly committed to UK for the 2024-25 season: Drexel transfer Amari Williams, longtime BYU signee Collin Chandler and Kentucky Mr. Basketball Travis Perry, the lone holdover from Calipari’s 2024 class.

On a Thursday night, the Wildcats’ coaching staff — also still a work in progress — was having dinner in Lexington with one recruit when UK assistant Jason Hart found himself on the phone with the father of another.

Lamont Butler — the standout point guard from San Diego State — was interested in Kentucky, and the feeling was certainly mutual. UK’s coaches had been planning to travel to Las Vegas, where Butler was working out as he considered the NBA draft, but that trip wasn’t supposed to happen for a couple of days, the Wildcats’ staff too busy juggling visiting recruits back home.

Butler had been in the transfer portal for only a day at that point, and he was in no hurry to make a decision. Surely there was plenty of time.

But that Thursday night, Hart got wind that Texas Tech was planning to visit before the UK coaches were scheduled to be there.

“We had to beat them,” Hart says now.

The UK staff talked it over. The decision wasn’t a difficult one.

By the time the sun rose the next morning, the coaches were already up.

Pope was scheduled to make his first appearance on Kentucky Sports Radio that morning. He canceled. Plans for other recruits were shuffled around. Not long after sunrise, Pope, Hart, Cody Fueger and Alvin Brooks III, who officially joined the staff less than 24 hours earlier, boarded a plane bound for Vegas, making Butler the first UK target of the Pope era to get the full, four-deep treatment on the recruiting trail.

Kentucky wasn’t going to let anyone else get to him first.

“Had we not beat them, he probably wouldn’t be here,” Hart said.

While the coaches were in the air, Brooks posted a photo to Instagram from inside the plane, setting off a frenzy back home. At that point in the process, a certain segment of UK fans had grown desperate for any bit of recruiting info they could get. Speculation regarding potential transfer targets — some accurate, some not — was all over message boards and social media. Fans were even tracking the plane’s flight path to see where Pope might be headed.

Three time zones away, Butler woke up with no idea of what that Friday would bring.

After the Moreno Valley, California, native hit the transfer portal earlier that week, he had heard from Hart, a former Southern Cal assistant.

“He previously recruited me when he was at USC,” Butler said. “We kind of lost contact there, but he was always a great guy. And then he called me as soon as he saw I entered the portal. He was like, ‘I need my guy.’ Like, ‘Come on, let’s go to Kentucky. Let’s do it here.’”

Butler later talked to Fueger, too, but his father, Lamont Butler Sr., was the only one who had spoken to Pope at that point.

“They were supposed to come like two or three days later,” Butler said. “And then it moved up to the next day. And then, instead of the next day, it moved to the next morning.”

Butler walked into the gym for his Friday morning workout. Pope and the three assistants were waiting for him.

“And I’m thinking, ‘I’m gonna just work out. They’re gonna watch, and then we’re gonna talk,’” Butler recalls. “And (Pope’s) like, ‘Uhhh, nah. Let’s just go talk right now.’”

Pope lands the commitment

The four Kentucky coaches, Butler, and his parents — already in Vegas to visit for a few days — found a quiet place to talk while the group workout went on without the point guard.

“I missed the whole workout, which I was kind of mad about at the time,” Butler said.

But UK’s staff wanted to move quickly.

“It’s the portal, right? Everything happens fast in the portal,” Pope said. “And you’re always trying to calculate things out and figure things out. There was no basketball involved. It was just going out to sit and meet with him in person. And we got to sit and meet with his mom and dad. They were both there, and we got to sit and talk with him and kind of just lay out our vision.

“I mean, I’ve been a huge fan of his for a long time, so there wasn’t a lot of scouting involved. Like, I know his game really well. I also think he’s got an insane upside. And, so, it was fast. I actually can’t remember the preceding couple of days about exactly how we got there, but I feel like I just knew that I wanted to bring a winner here, and I wanted to add that at the beginning of it. And so when the opening was there, it was like, ‘We gotta go. Let’s go! Let’s get this done.’”

For Butler, it was a blur. He says now that he was in no hurry to make a college decision. His plan was to meet with teams over the next week or two and narrow his list from there. But Kentucky got there first, and Pope and company didn’t want to leave anything to chance.

“I don’t know why there was so much urgency,” Butler said. “But I felt the urgency. Like, as soon as they walked in — and how they were talking — they wanted to get it done right away. That didn’t really persuade me — it was more what he was saying. You know, his vision.

“But yeah, I was ready to commit as soon as we finished that talk.”

And he did.

Much to the surprise — but approval — of his parents, Butler committed to the Cats on the spot.

“They sold me,” Butler said. “They sold me on what it would be like playing here, the opportunity I would have here, which is different than anywhere else. It’s Kentucky basketball — the highest level of college basketball. And it was his first year, so we want to make it special.

“And I felt like I wanted to help with that.”

Why Pope wanted Butler

The reason for Pope’s urgent pursuit was simple.

There aren’t many players like Butler in the transfer portal.

His stats last season — 9.9 points, 3.0 rebounds and 2.6 assists per game, only a 30.2% shooter from 3-point range — won’t jump off the page, but his worth to a basketball team runs far deeper than the box score.

Butler is one of the best perimeter defenders in the country. His spirited play makes those around him better. He’s relatively quiet, but a leader nonetheless. And he’s a winner.

Over the past four seasons, Butler played 131 games at San Diego State under coach Brian Dutcher — 102 as a starter. The Aztecs had a 100-31 record in those games. They went to the NCAA Tournament all four years he was there and advanced past the first weekend of March Madness in each of the past two seasons, including a run to the 2023 national championship game, with Butler hitting a buzzer-beater in the Final Four to get them there.

When building a team from scratch, Pope, whose BYU team played San Diego State in each of the past four seasons, wanted to inject that winning attitude into his program.

“I just think it’s his DNA. It’s hard to come by,” Pope said. “It’s hard to come by a guy that’s won as much as he has, the way he’s won. He’s faced adversity and responded from it. I have so much respect for Dutch and that program and how he coaches these guys and what they bring.

“We played against him every single year in epic games. Every single game was an epic game. And so it was kind of a composition of all those things. Like, ‘Let’s go see if we can get this done right now.’”

Once Butler’s commitment was wrapped up, the UK coaching staff flew back to Lexington, and the recruiting floodgates opened.

“When you get a player like him, he gets automatic respect,” Hart said. “San Diego State is a high major, right? They’ve won more games than a bunch of high majors. And he’s recognizable. He hit a shot to go to the championship game. So at the end of the day, people knew who he was from San Diego State. He wasn’t at Duke or Carolina or Kentucky.”

Hart says that what came next was no coincidence.

Remember, at the time of Butler’s commitment, the only players pledged to Pope’s first roster were Chandler, Perry and Williams. Over the course of the next five days, Kentucky picked up new commitments from Otega Oweh, Andrew Carr, Brandon Garrison, Koby Brea and Kerr Kriisa — five talented, coveted players with ample college basketball experience.

When Pope and his staff stepped onto the plane for Vegas, they didn’t have enough players to play a game. Less than a week after landing Butler, they had a group worthy of Top 25 consideration.

“We needed a point guard, a veteran, and he was on the market. That’s what we needed, and we went and got him,” Hart said. “And then that set the tone for us getting Andrew and Koby Brea and all the rest of the guys, because they saw that he came. … He was kind of like the linchpin of our recruiting for this transfer portal.”

What Butler brings to Kentucky

As soon as Pope’s first team arrived in town, Butler made his move.

He’s relatively quiet by nature, but his competitiveness is infectious, and he came to Lexington wanting to assert himself as a leader. Butler looks back now and feels like he was “forcing it” when summer practice began in June.

“I just wanted to have a loud voice,” he explains. “I knew everyone respected each other, but, you know, they also respected me because of my experience in college basketball. So I just wanted to be a guy that’s talking all the time. You always hear my voice. And now there’s more intent in my leadership. Coaching guys up. Understanding different defensive calls. On offense, seeing certain things. I feel like my leadership now is more intent-driven.”

Pope noticed the progression, smiling as he recounted watching Butler find his voice over these past few months.

“He is so intent upon being a leader,” the coach said. “He is intentionally trying to take opportunities and build opportunities to take on a leadership role over the team. He’s doing it vocally. He’s doing it in huddles. He’s doing it in the locker room. He’s doing it one on one with guys that need to have someone put an arm around him. He’s doing it with the coaching staff, in terms of being a guy that relays information and brings things from the team.

“He’s doing it in every way possible.”

His fellow Wildcats have raved about him.

“He’s an awesome teammate,” Kriisa said, noting the ways he brings out the best in everyone who shares the court with him.

Oweh echoed that thought. When he sees how Butler carries himself, especially defensively? “It just makes you want to go out there and be better.”

But Butler did a lot of this the last four seasons at San Diego State. Finding something new is the reason he made the difficult decision to leave. He recounted his “four amazing years” with the Aztecs and the relationship he built with Dutcher and that staff. He said they were sad to see him go but supportive of his desire to try something new.

“They wanted the best for me,” he said. “They wanted me to go out there and achieve my dreams.”

Butler, like pretty much anyone who comes to play basketball for Kentucky — no matter the era — wants to someday reach the NBA, and he wants to show this season that he has the offensive chops to make it.

While coaching against Butler over the years, Pope observed — like everyone else — a smothering defender and fierce competitor. But he also saw more possibilities for his game.

Dutcher’s teams are annually regarded among the best defensive units in the country — and they win at a high level — but the Aztecs are also typically positioned toward the bottom of the national ratings in tempo. Pope’s offensive approach is completely different — a fast, freewheeling style with lots of 3-pointers — and he feels Butler can thrive as the point guard in such a system.

“It’s why the game against San Diego State was so fun every year, because you had this clash of two completely different (styles),” Pope said. “But in truth, like the heart of it, the heart of the philosophy was incredibly similar. It was just displayed in completely opposite ways.

“And so when I talk about his upside, I’m talking about just the way we take the same philosophy and manifest it on the court is so different. And I’m really excited for him to live in this space. And he’s done a nice job living in this space in practice. I can’t wait until he starts to explore it in games. But for him, this is going to be like the same old thing, but done way, way different. And it’s going to be fun. And it’s going to feed into some of his strengths.”

Butler felt like he was good at getting to the basket at San Diego State, but the lane was often clogged when he got there, making it more difficult for the 6-2 guard to finish. The wealth of outside shooting on this UK team should give him much more room to operate with the ball, whether scoring at the rim or showing off his vision as a passer and his ability to read defenses.

Playing alongside so many great 3-point shooters should also lead to more open looks for himself. He was only a 30.2% shooter from deep last season, but he hit at 34.2% — with a slightly higher volume — the year before.

“I want to just prove to people that my offensive game is better than — either what it has been portrayed as or what people think,” Butler said. “I just continue to be aggressive, continue to be confident. It’s nothing that I haven’t done before. Just showing it at a higher stage, I think that’s gonna be big for my game.”

But most of all, he’s here to win.

By total happenstance, the room in which Butler sat down last week to talk about the basketball journey that led him to Kentucky was set to be utilized later that day for a photo shoot featuring the program’s eight national championship trophies.

Once the interview was finished, before leaving the room, Butler made a point to walk over and take a closer look at that hardware.

He leaned down to inspect each trophy, marveling at the history. He asked some questions of a UK staffer overseeing the project and even made a few comments that showed his knowledge of the program’s past success, somewhat surprising to hear from a 22-year-old who grew up on the other side of the country.

His new head coach helped bring one of those trophies to Lexington, of course, and Pope has promised to deliver more banners to Rupp Arena in the future.

Six months ago, as a new era of Kentucky basketball was in its earliest days, Pope found his first leader, a like-minded young man who wants to help him turn that dream into a reality. And now they’re here to give it a try together.

“We had a great conversation,” Butler said. “You know, his vision for myself, and how he envisioned Kentucky basketball under his realm. I really respected it, and I felt like I could be a big part of it and have a big impact here. And he really trusted me.

“You could see how much they cared. That they really wanted me. That I was a real priority. I felt that. And I’m glad I’m here, for sure.”

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