Duke basketball has always been a team to get elite players, and a big reason for that was former head coach Mike Krzyzewski. One elite player that he and the Blue Devils had back in the day was Shane Battier.

Battier had a great career with Duke, and he went on to the NBA and had a great career with the Memphis Grizzlies, Houston Rockets and Miami Heat. Going into college, however, Battier almost chose Michigan State basketball over the Blue Devils.

Shane Battier recently went on The Draymond Green Show and discussed a lot of things, and one thing that he talked about was the experience he had while being recruited to colleges. Draymond Green went to Michigan State, so the discussion of Tom Izzo came up, and Battier revealed why he ended up going to Duke basketball instead of playing for the Spartans.

“True story, and I love Izz ( Tom Izzo) and I tell Izz this to his face, he messed up,” Battier said on the show. “I’m being recruited by everybody, and Izz had just got the job at Michigan State, and I liked Izz you know. I'm like ‘man this guy's, he's legit. He's got it.' But Izz messed up. One day he came to me and said, ‘Shane,' and you know this, Izz said we had the best weight staff in the Big Ten, okay. We're gonna put 40 pounds of muscle on you, and you're going to be the baddest power forward the Big Ten.”

“And then I got Dean Smith and Coach K say, ‘No man, like you're a small forward, man. You gotta shoot threes.' I'm like, I'm with those guys. So that was the reason why that was like the main… I didn't want to be power forward. I didn't want to. I didn't want to, you know, put on 40 pounds and bang guys. I want to be a small forward and shoot threes so that's … why I went South. True story.”

So that's the reason for Battier picking Duke basketball over Michigan State. That was a tough miss for Tom Izzo, but he has signed plenty of legendary players while he has been with the Spartans, and it seemed to work out well for both of them.

Still, it always make you wonder how things would've turned out when a big-name player reminisces on their recruitment and discusses the other schools he was considering. What would've happened if Battier went to Michigan State instead of Duke? We'll never know.