National Basketball Association

Even Draymond Green’s college coach didn’t see him having this much success

Published Apr. 22, 2017 11:36 a.m. ET

Aaron Torres

It's indisputable at this point that Draymond Green is a bona-fide NBA star, one of the leaders of the best team in the league right now. What's also easy to forget is that while Draymond is a key cog on a Warriors team looking to make it to a third straight NBA Finals, his meteoric rise from second round pick to All-Star is something that very few -- if any -- could have seen coming.

That includes his former college coach, Michigan State's Tom Izzo.

Izzo was a guest on "The Sidelines" podcast with FS1 college hoops insider Evan Daniels this week, and made a rather surprising admission: Even he didn't think Draymond would be this good when he arrived as a pudgy, slightly overweight freshman in 2008 [you can listen to the full audio above].

“I knew he had a high basketball IQ — I didn’t know it was an off-the-charts one. And then he started working harder, and he had a couple of intangibles that those analytic guys can’t measure.

He’s tougher than nails, ya know. He’s a confident kid — almost sometimes too confident — but he’s a very confident kid, and his will to win is off the charts. In this day and age when it’s all about me and the Twitter world, as I call it, he’s one of those throwbacks that winning is more important than his own stats."

“I think his coaches agree, I would agree, I think he would agree now, if you’ve got to put a team together — there’s the LeBrons, who are phenomenal, and KDs and Currys, but if you want to put a guy in there that will help create the winning atmosphere, I think Draymond Green ranks in the top couple in the entire league.”