Michigan State basketball hosts clinic for Boys & Girls Club of Lansing during Grind Week; Izzo talks Maui fundraiser
East Lansing, Mich. – About 20 former Michigan State basketball players congregated in East Lansing Thursday to kick off the program’s third-annual Grind Week.
Draymond Green, Travis Walton and Mateen Cleaves helped organize the weekend reunion, which brings together Spartan basketball players from across generations for scrimmages and workouts.
Friday afternoon, inside the Berkowitz Basketball Complex auxilary gym, the players coached Michigan State’s 2023 Grind Week Youth Basketball Clinic, a free, one-day basketball camp for the Boys and Girls Club of Lansing, sponsored by HAP CareSource.
“Dr. Mike Genord and HAP CareSource have been very instrumental in us being able to get this going again,” Izzo said. “To partner with somebody like them has been great for us.
“For HAP and their services, I greatly appreciate it. For our former players who came back, that means the world to me. And for our current players to learn how to do some things in our community, it’s kind of a win, a win, a win, and that doesn’t happen all the time.”
Michigan State hosted a similar event last year, but on a smaller scale. Prior to that, the program couldn’t host many community events due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, thanks to funding from HAP CareSource, Izzo and his players gave back to an organization that has important ties to the Lansing community.
“This will be a chance to have the kids actually work with our kids and our kids work with them,” Izzo said. “A lot of these guys (current and former Michigan State players) grew up in Boys and Girls organizations. For me, it’s a privilege to do this, it’s exciting for me to do it.
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“When your guys come back and they come back the way they did and they were so helpful to everybody, it’s special. It’s really special.”
Izzo talks Michigan State, Tennessee exhibition fundraiser
Izzo also commented on the upcoming exhibition game against Tennessee, a recently-announced charity event to help raise money to support those affected by the wildfires on the island of Maui.
On Aug. 30, Izzo and Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes announced that their once-secret scrimmage at the Breslin Center would be open to the public. All proceeds from the game, which will take place on Oct. 29, will go to the Hawai’i Community Foundation Maui Strong Fund.
“That’s exciting,” Izzo said of the charity exhibition. “As soon as that happened, I called KP (Kevin Pauga) and said, ‘Hey, I know Rick will want to do it,’ because Rick Barnes and I have gone to Maui. They (Tennessee) were supposed to go this year, and I’ve been there four times. I said, ‘Let’s go do something for them.’ It’ll be a great game to have at home, (with) two top-10 teams. I think the only negative is you’ll probably play it more to win it instead of just getting your people like you would in a scrimmage, but Rick and I might talk about that too, because, really, it’s about the cause and us getting better. Both of us.
“So we’ll figure out what we’re going to do, but it’ll be great for our fans. We’ll be able to have referees and we’ll be able to raise some money for the people over there, and maybe get some other people who don’t have season tickets – I don’t know how they’re going to do it – but I’m hoping that other people who have never seen us play are able to see us play.”
