Tom Izzo has had to deal with plenty of obstacles during his time as head coach both on and off the court. The Hall of Famer is used to game-planning for top-10 opponents and preparing for the NCAA Tournament, but every now and then he’s faced with real-world obstacles off the court.
Izzo has dealt with COVID-19, a campus shooting, his own player getting shot in his hometown over Christmas break, and now potential overseas warfare.
How does the latter tie into Izzo?
Michigan State’s head coach has a couple of former players currently playing in the Israeli Basketball Premier League. He spoke about Cassius Winston and Malik Hall earlier this week in his weekly presser and he expressed concern regarding their safety with all the warfare going on in the Middle East between Israel and Iran and Palestine.
Izzo said that he was working on getting Winston and Hall home safe, and on Friday afternoon, there was an update regarding their safety.
According to Connor Earegood of The Detroit News, a Michigan State spokesperson confirmed that both Winston and Hall are now safe in Serbia. While Izzo would probably rather bring them home, this has to make him feel a lot better after he spoke about them earlier this week.
Hearing that Winston and Hall are safe in a different country is great news, and I’d assume that the next step would be getting them back home, at least for the time being.
It’s crazy that we even have to talk about the safety of players overseas playing professional basketball but the world is a crazy place right now. Without getting into it, there’s a chance that United States-born players overseas could become targets of harassment and even worse just based on what’s happening with the recent bombings.
While Serbia isn’t as far away from Israel as Izzo probably would like, it’s better than nothing. This also goes to show that Izzo cares deeply about his players well beyond their Spartan playing days.
When people talk about Michigan State being a family, this is exactly what they mean.