Before he starred at the University of Connecticut and enjoyed a 14-year run in the NBA, Caron Butler sought to escape trouble that found him as a kid while growing up Racine, Wisconsin.

Butler wanted a fresh start, where he could attend school to improve his grades and play basketball.

That’s when he found Max Good, a post-graduate men’s basketball coach at Maine Central Institute in Pittsfield.

One of Butler’s first conversations with Good in the late 1990s was as blunt as a blocked shot.

“I told him, ‘We were 35-0 last year, and I looked up and down our roster and didn’t see your (expletive) name on it. We don’t need you,’ ” Good recalled telling the future star.

That wasn’t all. If Butler ever thought his time at the Pittsfield school was too tough, Good let him know he easily could find somebody else.

“He reminded me as soon as I got there,” said Butler, who arrived at MCI for the 1998-99 season. “He built up that urgency in me. That, look, this was the opportunity of a lifetime and I couldn’t blow it.”

Good’s assessment wasn’t just a coach serving a heaping dose of humility on a hotshot prospect. It was true.

Under Good from 1989-99, MCI went 275-30 and won five New England prep school championships. Ten of Good’s MCI players went on to the NBA and dozens played NCAA Division I basketball.

Good, a 78-year-old Gardiner native and Windham resident, will be inducted Sunday into the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame during a ceremony at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor.

Butler, a two-time NBA All-Star who played for nine teams, will present Good at the ceremony.

“I consider (Good) family. He’s the pops I never had. I owe him,” said Butler, who will return to Maine for the first time since his days at MCI.

MCI dropped the men’s post-graduate basketball program in 2012; the school’s board of trustees cited the growing cost of running the program as the primary reason.

What had made MCI attractive to so many players was Good and his brand of tough love. Discipline on and off the court was paramount.

“Tough love is exactly what he represents. That’s the best thing that could happen to a player,” said Andy Bedard, a native of Rumford who played for Good in 1995.

In anticipation of playing Division I basketball, Bedard left Mountain Valley High for a senior year at MCI in 1995.

“If he wasn’t being honest and straight with you, he was doing you a disservice. … If you were giving 99.9 percent, he was (angry) because you weren’t giving 100 percent.”

“He was honesty. He was 100 proof,” Butler said of Good. “I think every kid has to be told the truth.”

Bedard recalled a quote from Good in a newspaper story announcing his decision to attend MCI.

All Good would promise Bedard was two things: a pair of sneakers and a hard time.

“And I needed both,” Bedard said.

Good knows he was hard on his players. He had to be.

Many had been coddled since they could dribble a basketball. Maintaining good grades while managing the time needed to be a part of a top-flight basketball program would be hard work, and Good made sure it wasn’t taken lightly.

Bedard said that he never saw a player push back against Good and his methods. Good said Douglas Cummings, the former MCI headmaster, sometimes questioned his tendency to get in players’ faces.

“We tried to give them what they needed, not what they wanted,” Good said. “Some of them were good at basketball but had low self-esteem academically, and that can be a combustive combination.”

For Butler, that tough love began when he landed in Bangor. Good picked him up at the airport but offered no help with the five heavy duffel bags Butler brought. They stopped at McDonald’s, where Good bought burgers for himself and Gentry, the dog, but not Butler.

When they arrived on campus, Good told Butler to drop his stuff off in his room and get dressed for practice.

It was 11 p.m.

“He wanted to see if I belonged,” Butler said, adding he plans to share that story during Sunday’s induction ceremony.

Butler belonged, and his career took off after earning a scholarship to play for Coach Jim Calhoun at UConn.

Butler played two seasons for the Huskies and was Big East Player of the Year in 2002. Later that year, the Miami Heat selected Butler 10th overall in the NBA draft.

Butler, a two-time NBA All-Star, played for nine teams in his 14-year career.

Founded in 1866, MCI wasn’t one of the fly-by-night diploma factory schools that popped up simply as an excuse to form an elite basketball team, and Good made sure his players understood that. Study halls were mandatory and there were grade checks every two weeks.

If you carried a C or better in each class, keep up the good work. If not, players were expected to meet with teachers until the grades improved.

“That’s a testament to the teachers. They wouldn’t clown around with that stuff. What good is it if you’re not pushing them?” Good said.

Sixty players arrived at MCI needing to boost their SAT score to qualify for NCAA Division I basketball, Good said. Fifty-four succeeded, and that’s as important a number to him as the wins, championships or players who went to the NBA.

“He knew what it took to be a Division I player. You were already accustomed to the intensity and training when you got there because he put you through it at MCI,” said Bedard, who began his college career at Boston College before transferring to the University Maine.

On the court, Good taught Bedard how to be a point guard.

“At Mountain Valley, I had the ball the whole game and shot every time I touched it,” said Bedard, who was inducted into the Maine Sports Hall of Fame last spring. “I needed the athletic challenge, not necessarily the year academically.”

“(Bedard) came out of Rumford thinking he invented basketball. He had a confidence problem. He had too much,” Good said.

Good’s lessons stuck with Butler throughout his career.

“He prepared me for Jim Calhoun (at UConn). He prepared me for Pat Riley. He prepared me for Stan Van Gundy,” Butler said.

Before MCI, Good was the head coach for eight years at Eastern Kentucky, where Nick Mayo of Oakland recently set the school scoring record.

Good left MCI to be an assistant to Bill Bayno at UNLV before taking over as interim head coach when Bayno was fired during the 2000-01 season.

A year after Good left for UNLV, MCI was in the national spotlight. Three of Good’s players were suspended by the NCAA over the issue of whether AAU teams or sponsors paid part of the tuition to attend MCI.

Good, in a 2000 interview, told ESPN, “The youngsters who came to MCI selected us. That may sound arrogant on our part to say that, but I didn’t recruit any of these young people.”

Good went on to coach Bryant University, taking it to the NCAA Division II national championship game in 2005. Good rejoined Bayno as an assistant coach at Loyola Marymount, then took over as head coach when Bayno stepped down due to health reasons in 2008. Good coached at Loyola Marymount through the 2013-14 season, after which his contract wasn’t renewed.

Most recently, Good coached men’s basketball at Pratt Community College in Kansas, resigning early in the 2017-18 season. It was time for he and his wife Phyllis to come home. They live in Windham and last year Good coached a ninth-grade AAU team. With all those stops, MCI holds a dear place in Good’s heart.

“I loved MCI,” Good said. “I loved my players so much. They knew that. I was positive, too. Kids don’t care what you know until they know you care.”

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