Couch: Open locker rooms, constant interviews prep Michigan State players for NBA

CHICAGO – Wherever Miles Bridges and Jaren Jackson Jr. are selected in the NBA draft, it’s likely their interviews with team executives last week only helped.

You could tell that much by how they answered questions from reporters surrounding them in close quarters at the NBA Draft Combine — the thoughtfulness and carefulness, the eye contact and engagement, the willingness to share just the right amount.

Their time at Michigan State played a role in that.

No other Big Ten basketball program is so open to members of the media — the locker room after every game, a practice before almost every game. If you score 30 points and hit the game-winner, you’re available to talk about it. If you miss 12 of 13 shots and get benched down the stretch, you’re available to answer for it. Have your name come up in an FBI probe into college basketball recruiting, you’re available, at your locker, after a game, on the road, with no one stepping in to save you.

It makes a difference in the long run, I believe. That daily accountability and interaction is a worthy part of their education. A missed opportunity for many other programs.

It can be unpleasant, this past season especially, as MSU’s program and head coach found themselves at the center of scrutiny. But life is sometimes unpleasant. Even an NBA life. The closeness of the interaction creates a conversation that does’t happen in a press conference. 

Tom Izzo, ironically, didn’t always handle the unpleasant questions last season with the openness he usually does, nor the accessibility he creates for his players. For the first time since I’ve been covering him, I don’t think he knew what to say.

His players fared pretty well, considering the circumstances. They had to navigate difficult subjects with recorders and cameras in their faces. They’ll be better for it. They’ll be more at ease the next time they have to be thoughtful under pressure, which, for Bridges and Jackson, might have been the case last week. 

“It definitely prepared me for this, it definitely prepared me for the NBA,” Bridges said Thursday, speaking broadly of the highs and lows of last season.

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Bridges has been comfortable in interview settings as long as I’ve known him. Jackson has never been shy, either.

There are, however, noticeable improvements in the clarity and sophistication of their responses since they arrived at MSU. That much I noticed this week in Chicago. I couldn’t help but to think they were better prepared than most of the other players going through this process, which included morning interview sessions with NBA folks who were deciding whether to invest millions of dollars into them.

As Missouri’s Michael Porter Jr. and Oklahoma’s Trae Young each boastfully declared themselves to be the best player available in next month’s NBA draft, Jackson, the youngest player in the draft, answered more reasonably.

“Well, you’re asking me,” he said. “Everybody is going to say they’re the best. Everybody wants to be the No. 1 pick. I feel like I have confidence in myself and I have confidence in my abilities.”

If I’m an NBA executive, that sort of cerebral response stands out. Jackson didn’t say things like that early in his freshman season at MSU, at least not while I was listening. He did occasionally later on. Part of that is personality and intellect. Part of it is practice.

Denzel Valentine became a good interviewee. Despite his outgoing personality, he didn’t start out that way at MSU. 

“It definitely was helpful,” said Denzel Valentine, who played four years at MSU and went through this draft process two years ago, arguably maximizing his draft stock before the Chicago Bulls selected him No. 14 overall. “The locker room was open. We always answered questions and did things that way. Doing interviews, watching coach (Tom) Izzo, how he did interviews. 

“We would meet about it. (Izzo) would say how to say things and what to say, how to approach them — stand up straight, look them in the eye.

“When we faced that stage, when we were asked questions on television or by media or by front office people, we were able to answer them clearly because we had dealt with so many people asking questions.”

Valentine recalls not wanting to face the world after MSU’s loss to Middle Tennessee State in his final game.

“That was pretty huge, having to go to the media and man up and take the criticism,” he said.

He was prepared for it by then. He again sounded prepared two months later at the draft combine.

MSU’s player accessibility doesn’t change personalities. Draymond Green didn’t need an open locker room to be a talker. Deyonta Davis, in public settings, was still shy and uncomfortable as a rookie with the Memphis Grizzlies — though less so than when he arrived at MSU.

But this is one area where I think Izzo and MSU give their players, all of them NBA dreamers, a clear leg up, whatever becomes of their professional lives.

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Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.