And he struggled with it.

“He cried to and from the high school because his Air Force Ones didn’t come in his size,” said Darlis Nix, using her son’s favorite basketball shoes as an example. “He was so heartbroken and I said, ‘One day, they’ll be in your size again.’”

So the then-320-pound Derrick Nix found comfort in his weight — and his shoes — by playing basketball. He was not immune to the trash talk and heckling he endured from opposing players and fans in high school. But basketball served as an overriding psychological force.

“People said stuff to me,” Nix said. “But they respected me because they knew I couldn’t be stopped.”

Since Nix — now a 19-year-old freshman center on the MSU men’s basketball team — joined the Spartans, he has conformed to a rigorous diet and exercise regimen to help him lose weight and become better fit to put his highly tuned basketball skills to work for the No. 5 Spartans.

His eating habits have been refined, his exercise routines have escalated from next to nothing and the transformation has been evident with the nearly 40 pounds he’s lost.

Nix is part of a touted freshman frontcourt duo that includes his roommate and friend Garrick Sherman that will be tapped to contribute to the Spartans’ Final Four aspirations this year.

But beyond the here and now, MSU head coach Tom Izzo sees something in Nix that potentially could boost a talented basketball team and a gifted young man.

“He’s still a work in progress,” Izzo said. “There’s no question. But every time I look at him, I think he looks better. Sometimes that doesn’t mean he’s losing more weight or doing this and that. But everything is starting to come together.”

Always a Spartan

Derrick Nix was so excited to share the news of his college commitment with his mother, he didn’t wait for her to wake up.

He called his mom, who works midnights as a housekeeper at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan in Detroit, and woke her from an afternoon nap.

“One day he called me,” Darlis Nix recalled. “I said, ‘Baby, you know I work midnights.’ And he said, ‘Ma, I gotta tell you what I did today. I committed to Michigan State.’ I sat up in bed and said, ‘You did what? You don’t make a decision just like that.’”

As surprised and concerned as Darlis Nix was of her son’s swift choice, Derrick was just as certain he’d made the right one.

As Darlis remembers, Derrick said: “Ma, at the end of the day, I know Michigan State is where I want to be. I don’t want anybody to lead me on and I’m not going to lead anybody else on.”

So the transformation began.

Nix, a dominant center at Pershing, averaged 15 points and 15 rebounds per game for the Doughboys. But now looking back at film and thinking of his performance in high school, Nix says it looks like a different player running the floor.

“I looked way bigger and slower,” he said. “I just got really fatigued real early and had to come out of the game or I got so tired, I couldn’t run up and down the court.”

A four-star recruit and the 69th best player in the country according to recruiting Web site Rivals.com, Nix said he could have had an even more upside.

“I probably would have been top 20 in the country,” he said. “I’m highly skilled, and if I get good touches, I have good feet. But my weight was such a problem I couldn’t accelerate or dunk over people like I really wanted to.”

Darlis Nix said her son’s size made life difficult for him off the court, too.

“When he comes home, he has sisters and brothers here,” she said. “He likes to wrestle and play. I said, ‘You can’t wrestle and play because you’re a boy in a man’s body. He didn’t want to go anywhere. He said, ‘Nobody wants to look at me. People are gawking and staring at me.’”

In their recruiting visits, Izzo and his staff saw the same raw talent but the same prohibitions.

“We really think the world of his high school coach and we knew he was making progress that way,” Izzo said. “But it’s hard to change those habits when you don’t have the same kind of control we have here with trainers and doctors and the things we can help him with.”

Unfortunately, it was a task many had tried to tackle before.

“He was just — oh my goodness, that boy — you couldn’t tell him a thing,” said Darlis Nix, whom Derrick called the most supportive person in his life. “He’d say, ‘Two pounds. I think I lost two pounds.’ Before he got up there, we went on a diet together. It didn’t work.”

‘Old-fashioned hard work’

Derrick Nix enrolled at MSU to play basketball — in an offensive lineman’s body.

The upkeep that started when he committed to MSU continued once Nix joined the Spartans and the coaching staff put him on an additional diet and exercise plan.

He did 60 minutes of cardio work every day, in addition to regular team strength training. He met with faculty from the Sports and Cardiovascular Nutrition department to map out a diet and nutrition plan.

Nix, who said he used to eat whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it, said the dieting has been the most difficult. Giving up his favorite food — fried chicken — has been a real chore.

“I just have to watch what I eat and make sure I don’t eat past 9 o’clock. And, if I do, make sure I’m eating fruit, cereal, something like that,” Nix said. “I used to eat all kinds of crazy at night time. It didn’t matter. I just ate whatever I wanted to.”

Mike Vorkapich, the team’s strength and conditioning coach, immediately saw traits in Nix that confirmed the young man was committed.

“July Fourth weekend, he was heading to a barbecue and he called to ask me if he could eat the food at the barbecue,” Vorkapich said. “I said ‘Absolutely. Just one plate, not two.’ That’s the biggest thing — building that relationship with him when he felt comfortable to call me on a Saturday afternoon in the summer. When I started getting phone calls on the weekend, I thought, ‘This kid is really committed to this.’”

Sophomore forward Draymond Green, who endured a similar routine when he came to MSU last season and now can be seen running the floor and logging 25 minutes per game, said he sees much improvement in his teammate.

“He’s coming along great,” Green said. “Ideally, at that midpoint of the season, your conditioning starts to get better. You’re starting to get a better feel for the game and you’re starting to understand a lot more. I think he’s coming along great and whenever he does come in the game, if he plays two minutes one night or 10 one night, he gives us what we need.”

Nix has slimmed down almost 40 pounds since becoming a Spartan and said he expects to drop 10 more once the season ends.

Vorkapich said he had hoped to see Nix a few pounds lighter at this point, but the muscle he’s put on also has been considerable. Vorkapich said Nix being able to make it four-minute stretches in between media timeouts during games is one of the most imminent goals.

“Everyone thinks there’s a magical solution,” Vorkapich said. “It’s just good old-fashioned hard work and buying into what he needs to do here. It’s probably the biggest step for any student-athlete: Buying into what you need to do nutritionally. Living in the dorms, your food selection might not be the best. It’s just discipline when nobody else is around and knowing what you need to do.”

‘He’s a sponge’

During MSU’s 70-63 win against Iowa in which the Hawkeyes whittled a 19-point MSU lead to as little as three, Nix sat on the bench next to a particularly disgruntled and rarely quiet Izzo.

After the game, Izzo said the freshman, who logged only seven minutes in the contest and only scored two points, had more “respect for the game” than some of his veteran players.

That attentiveness, combined with good hands and exceptional feet for a player his size — to Nix’s chagrin, Izzo has called him a “300-pound ballerina” — is what sets Nix’s ceiling so high.

“He’s been a sponge,” Izzo said. “He wants to learn, he wants to get better and that’s what makes it so fun.”

But Izzo continues to return to one trait that has hindered Nix’s ability to help the coach, his teammates and himself in his journey to become an effective player and teammate: communication.

“I don’t get to see it,” Izzo said. “I get frustrated with him. I asked our team (at a team meeting), ‘Does anybody know if Nix is mad at me?’ And they all looked around and said no. And I said, ‘Does anybody know if Nix is mad at you?’ And Nix changed. He smiled that much. I said, ‘Nix, you gotta help us out a little bit.’ He came up to me after and said, ‘I’m not mad at anybody.’ And I said, ‘I know. But I never know if you’re mad or you’re excited. You’re not excited with anybody either.’”

That emotion — anger, excitement, frustration, confusion or whatever the case may be — barely emanated in the Iowa win, in which Nix picked up on some things his elder cohorts might have neglected.

“We talked a little bit about what people were doing on the court,” Nix said of watching the game next to Izzo. “People not fighting over ball screens, people not going hard to the glass.”

Nix felt it wasn’t his place to speak up like he does with coaches and trainers when he needs a boost of motivation on the Treadmill or StairMaster. He held back, as he has on occasion this season.

“If I’m not doing it, then I can’t make anybody else do it,” Nix said. “If I don’t know exactly how I’m supposed to go, I can’t tell somebody else to do something. Coach knows, so I let him let them know.”

Such is Nix’s maturation process. Finding the balance between exerting his God-given talents and basketball IQ and recognizing the growth he has yet to endure has been a challenge.

But the consensus has been Nix could be the biggest transformation and low-post success story since Zach Randolph.

“For (Nix) to be able to do what he did, there’s some self-discipline in there,” Izzo said. “It’s pretty cool to watch a kid who’s 18 years old change himself like that. If he can go a little longer and get into this spring, he’s going to change his body even more and make himself a damn good player.”