Tom Izzo walked into my high school cafeteria in Fishers, Ind., snagged one of those red food trays and plopped down into a seat with my buddies and me. Coach Izzo had come to recruit me to Michigan State University, and it wasn’t long until he had everyone at our table wanting to join him there too.

I was trying to play it cool, like this was no big deal. But who was I kidding? A legend had come to recruit me, and it felt pretty good. He dug into a hot lunch, drank a carton of milk and seemed much more like one of the guys than he did a Hall of Fame coach with a national championship and seven trips to the Final Four.

At the time, I was still a serious high school football player. As a prep sophomore, I hadn’t committed to basketball on a full-time basis. For the next year, Coach Izzo would travel back to Indiana on Friday nights to watch my football games. Everyone knows how much he loves that sport, how close he’s been to his childhood friend, Steve Mariucci, and how engaged he’s been with the Michigan State programs under Nick Saban and Mark Dantonio. Mostly, people know how physical Spartans basketball has been under Coach Izzo, how he’ll bring out the shoulder pads and let us loose onto the practice floor.

View photos Gary Harris played two seasons at Michigan State. (Getty) More

My football background made everything such an easier adjustment to Coach Izzo, because Michigan State has never been a program for soft guys who easily get their feelings hurt.

You learn fast with Coach Izzo: Lock into the game, the practice, the assignment – or face his wrath. Fast-forward to my freshmen year: opening game in Germany against the University of Connecticut on television. We won the tip, and I ran down the court to start executing our opening set. Only, I completely blanked and forgot the play. Everyone was looking at me and I was lost. I just retreated to the corner – and stood there.

My mind wasn’t where it should’ve been, and Coach Izzo let me know at halftime: “You’re scared, Harris! You s— your pants!”

He challenged me – and I had to respond. That was always the case with Coach Izzo: Could you handle his challenges, because they were coming and you had to answer them or you couldn’t play at Michigan State.

Yes, I played football and never feared the contact on the court that came with our aggressive style in the Big Ten. But I didn’t always play with the intensity, the outward ferocity, that Coach Izzo wanted to see out of me. Or, in his words: “You’re just so cooooool, Gary Harris.”

He was determined to pull that out of me every day, and there were a few instances in my two seasons at Michigan State when he pushed me so hard that, well, he got more of it out of me than I wished I had shared with him.

View photos Harris started 76 games for the Nuggets last season. (Getty) More

Once I had snapped back at him on the bench. I dropped an F-bomb on him and one of our assistant coaches barked at me, “You can’t do that to Coach!” He was right, but I did.

After that game, I showered and was leaving the locker room in [Michigan State’s] Breslin Center. I was still fuming. I pretended that I didn’t see Coach Izzo on my way across the floor and out of the building. And suddenly I hear a voice calling over to me: “Really? Really? You’re going to yell at me like that and walk away without saying anything?”

And there was Coach Izzo – wearing a big smile on his face that simply said: Back to work tomorrow, and we’ll hit the reset button.

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