Draymond Green donates $3.1 million to MSU athletics

EAST LANSING – Draymond Green's love for Michigan State goes back to childhood and watching his aunt Annette Babers star for the Michigan State women's basketball team.

It continued as a grade-school kid cheering on fellow Saginaw native Jason Richardson as he helped Tom Izzo’s Spartans win the 2000 national championship. It became personal through four seasons playing for Izzo – picking up three Big Ten titles, two Final Four appearances and one Big Ten Player of the Year nod along the way – and Green has remained tightly connected with the program amid his rise to NBA champion.

He expressed those feelings Thursday in zeroes – on a $3.1 million check to MSU athletics in support of the men's basketball program – and with his strongest words yet about what MSU did for him. He left in 2012 as a second-round pick of the Golden State Warriors and was back Thursday as an NBA champion with a recently signed five-year, $82 million contract.

“I was pretty heavy when I got here and not expected to be a pro or doing what I'm doing today,” Green said at a Breslin Center news conference with Izzo, MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon and MSU athletic director Mark Hollis, with the current MSU basketball team and many others on hand. “So can I come in here and take credit for that, or do I give the credit where it's rightfully due, which is this university? And if so, how do I show my thanks? That was just a small way of me saying thank you.

“I can say thank you all I want and I can talk to coach Izzo every day. But how do I do something to say thank you but to also help these guys over here have the opportunity that I have? One thing coach Izzo used to always tell me is ‘I'm living my dream. All I want to do is see you live yours.’ As a freshman, it's hard to believe that. The way he's on you, you don't understand it, it's hard to believe it. Once you realize, ‘This guy wants me to be successful more than I want to be successful,’ it develops that love and makes you want to come back and give back to these guys like others have done for me.”

More: Draymond Green had Tom Izzo "speechless"

The only known larger donation from a current pro athlete to a college or university is the $5 million Curtis Granderson gave to Illinois-Chicago in 2013 for a new baseball stadium. In MSU history, Green's gift trumps by $100,000 the $3 million former MSU basketball great Earvin “Magic” Johnson gave for the Spartan Stadium north end zone renovation that opened last year. Asked if he’s starting a donation competition with Johnson, Green said: “I hope so.”

Johnson also announced a $1 million donation to the MSU athletic department in 2011. Former MSU and NFL offensive lineman Flozell Adams gave $1.5 million to the Spartan Stadium project in 2014. And former MSU and NBA guard Steve Smith donated $2.5 million in 1997 toward the construction of the Clara Bell Smith academic center, named after his late mother.

Those gifts are part of $22 million given all-time to the school by more than 2,400 former MSU athletes. The Green donation – which Simon called “an extraordinary gift – is part of an ongoing fund-raising campaign at MSU with a total goal of $262 million for athletics.

Green’s money will be divvied up, with $1 million going to the Draymond Green Strength and Conditioning Center at the Jack Breslin Student Events Center, an addition with an undetermined final cost and completion date, still new enough that Izzo hasn’t seen the drawn-up plans yet. It will include a hall of history and be a “grand entrance,” Hollis said, to Breslin.

“It's going to be a throughway for the public attending games as well as a recruiting center,” Hollis said, “an area that families and student-athlete prospects can come to not only every day but also the evening of the game.”

The other $2.1 million will fund an endowment for the program to help pay for scholarships. Green said the academic portion was important to him. He also said he wanted to do this in time for a huge recruiting weekend that includes Saturday’s MSU-Oregon football game.

“There's not a million guys like him,” Izzo said of Green. “Enjoy him, appreciate him, and thank him because this isn't going to stop with the money. I mean, he is one of Michigan State’s best recruiters.”

Contact Joe Rexrode: jrexrode@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @joerexrode. Check out his MSU blog at freep.com/heyjoe.

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