In the end, Izzo couldn't leave his family

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If you’ve ever been to a Tom Izzo press conference, you’ve heard the stories. There’s one thing that gives him the biggest smile at every press conference, and there’s one thing that gave him the biggest smile Tuesday night.

Talks with former players.

In college basketball, you get just four years to grow. Four years to learn how to be the best you can be. And for a coach, four years to make a lasting impact on someone’s life.

When asked what was the biggest reason for his decision to spurn the Cleveland Cavaliers and stay at MSU, it was all the calls he got from his former players.

Mateen Cleaves and Morris Peterson are the regulars. Ex-players who, no doubt, left the biggest impact on Izzo, and he on them. But it was other players Izzo mentioned: Jason Richardson, Zach Randolph, guys who, unlike Izzo, left early for the NBA, that really showed Izzo’s impact.

Magic Johnson, a player long before Izzo’s time, is also one of his best friends. Do you see Michael Jordan at every one of North Carolina’s NCAA Tournament games? Do you see Carmelo Anthony at Syracuse’s postseason games? You don’t see the family atmosphere at other programs. You’re not going to find players who care about their coach more anywhere else.

We’ll never know exactly how many players reached out and contacted Izzo or what they said, but we can see how much their coach means to them. College players come to learn. They come to learn from men who know what’s best for the athlete and what’s best for the person. There is perhaps no other coach in college basketball today who has as much love from his players, both former and current.

When Izzo first got up to the podium to announce to the Spartan Nation that he wasn’t going anywhere, there was a group of men who quickly went up to him shook his hand, looked him in the eye, and thanked him for staying.

Staying to teach them, staying to help them grow, staying to make them the best.

In the NBA, there’s little doubt that Izzo would have made the same connections. The salary cap, one issue Izzo brought up, brings so much change each season. There’s no growing — it’s just business. As much as Izzo might have wanted to hope, there is no way he can make an impact on his players lives like he can at MSU.

Izzo wants the grind of recruiting to ease. If he wants the one-and-done players like John Wall who only use college as a stepping stone, he can have them. But something he wants more than anything, is to help people.

People like Travis Walton and Marquise Gray, players who came into MSU with some issues but left as better men. Izzo’s program has always had some of the highest graduation rates in the country. He wants to win, but he wants to do it the right way.

And after Tuesday’s announcement that he’d be here for life, you can guarantee that Michigan State University’s men’s basketball program is going to be turning out changed men for a long, long time.

So he is back. For good. Derrick Nix, you can save your tears. The man you came to learn from is still teaching.

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