Xavier Tillman's NBA decision came down to interviews, Izzo ... and a Dick Vitale tweet

Matt Charboneau
The Detroit News

It was fitting, really, that Xavier Tillman’s Zoom call with reporters on Wednesday was delayed by a few seconds.

As Tillman’s camera fired up, he wasn’t busy with a workout or an interview with an NBA team. Instead, Tillman was trying to get a mask to stay on the face of his 3-year-old daughter, Ayanna. Or, as Tillman described, “my super hero.”

Michigan State's Xavier Tillman was the Big Ten's Defensive Player of the Year in the 2019-20 season.

It’s one way Michigan State fans came to know Tillman over the last three years. Not only did the 6-foot-8 center from Grand Rapids transform from promising young big man into surefire NBA draft pick, but he did so raising a family, as well.

First it was with Ayanna and mother, Tamia. And after Xavier and Tamia were married last summer, son Xavier Jr. arrived in February.

No hanging out with the guys and playing video games or wandering around the dorms. Tillman had a laser focus during his time at Michigan State. It began with family, continued with school and ended with basketball — in that order. His days were consumed with being a dad, a student and a player.

That approach paid off and it’s all coming together now for Tillman. Late last month he declared he would remain in the NBA Draft and forgo his final season at Michigan State, and by the end of this week, he’ll have his college degree.

“I’m so excited,” Tillman said. “I took six classes this summer so I could graduate in three years.”

It’s remarkable, really, when you contemplate how difficult it is for an athlete to graduate in three years. To see everything else that has been on Tillman’s plate makes it miraculous.

But here he is, on the cusp of getting that communications degree then getting drafted by an NBA team, something that seems nearly certain at this point.

“Me and my wife had this dream for I think these last two years,” Tillman said. “Just about starting our family for real, like having our own house and actually being independent from our family and stuff like that. It’s really just supporting our family our way. We kind of talked about it that way.”

The decision to leave Michigan State didn’t come easy for Tillman.

As his contemporaries opted to come back to an uncertain future — Iowa’s Luka Garza along with Illinois’ Kofi Cockburn and Ayo Dosunmu all pulled out of the draft — Tillman struggled with his choice.

“I came to the final decision a couple of days before I announced,” Tillman said. “But I was flipping every two weeks. I was flip-flopping, ready to go back, ready to keep my name in (the draft). Basically it was almost after every other interview. It would go really good and coach (Tom Izzo) would get some great feedback, and I’d think, ‘OK, I think I'm out.’ And then you’d go back into it and you can't just jump on one interview, you got to actually listen to the rest of them and see what kind of feedback we can get. Then the same thing happens again, so I definitely flip-flopped a lot until I got to the point where I was like, ‘Look, I have a lot of interest and I’ve just got to jump in and trust my work.”

It took some time for Tillman, last year’s Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year, to trust that feedback. This first evaluation from the NBA had no first-round projections while there was a 17% chance he’d go undrafted. After his first round of team interviews, the numbers improved to where Tillman realized getting drafted was likely.

In the meantime, Izzo was working with his contacts to find out how teams truly felt about Tillman. It provided another level in the relationship between coach and player.

“It showed how trustworthy and honest Coach really is,” Tillman said. “Think about it from his perspective. You’ve got one of your best players contemplating leaving or not to go play at the next level, but you also know that he has an extra year eligibility, so it’s like, ‘We could really use him and I could persuade him this way.’ But he played it so well to where it was like, ‘I want the best for you regardless of what you're doing, so I’ll be your eyes and ears out there to help you gain more knowledge of what they feel about you, how they feel about you, what you need to work on, stuff like that and we'll go from there.’”

But it wasn’t until a tweet from ESPN’s Dick Vitale that Tillman said he truly understood how highly he was valued by at least one NBA team.

Vitale posted on social media that Tillman had decided to return to Michigan State. That prompted one team to contact Tillman, wondering why he would make that choice and why wouldn’t let them know.

“They were like, ‘How are you going to leave without calling us and we really want you?’” Tillman said. “So that kind of gave me a lot of confidence like, ‘OK, this team is willing to stick its neck out for me if I put my name in the draft and keep it in the draft.’”

Tillman is back in Grand Rapids now, working out for 3-4 hours each day, meeting with NBA teams on his computer and squeezing in the important family time.

He’s at peace with the fact his last shot at a national championship was stolen by COVID-19, though he does think the Spartans were hitting their stride — “We started to pick up heat as a team,” he said. He’s doing his best now to move forward, and there was no feeling of relief when the Big Ten canceled fall sports on Tuesday. Instead, Tillman said he felt nothing but sorrow for the student-athletes that were affected.

And he’s not entering the draft process with any expectations as to where he might end up, other than with a team that allows him to develop, much like former Spartan Draymond Green did. It would be a heck of path for Tillman to follow if he has a career like Green’s and his time at Michigan State will be a big part of his journey.

It’s why Tillman heads to the next chapter in his life as a Spartan.

“It's bittersweet for sure,” Tillman said. “That's a place that really helped me change and develop into a man to really who I am today. Obviously, that's cliché, but I came in as that chubby 18-year-old when people are like, ‘Yeah, he's gonna have a great four-year career and is gonna be the definition of Spartan basketball.’ Then Coach Izzo turned me into a monster to where now they're like, ‘He is the definition of Michigan State basketball, and he made it to the next level.’

“So I'm forever indebted to that place, especially just the people. And not just my teammates and the coaches but like, the fans, the students. I'd be walking to class giving people high fives after win or losing a game like I was like, ‘Man, this place is diehard. They care about you regardless and they want you to be successful.’ I really appreciated that.”

mcharboneau@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @mattcharboneau