It was supposed to be a momentous merger of minds, a council of heroes, a snapshot of Spartan summitry. They had all been together before in open-gym pickup games, of course, but when Michigan State's mighty, marvelous M's -- Magic Johnson, Mateen Cleaves and Marcus Taylor -- convened in the Breslin Center on Oct. 19, it would be the perfect photo op: Point Guards Past, Present (well, okay, just past present) and Future all in one fell swoosh.

Except: "I don't care who was %$#@$#! here. I got to come down on these #$&%*@! sometime. They got to understand who's still running this %$#@$#! show." That would be MSU's diplomatic envoy, Tom Izzo, explaining why he squelched the dream pic -- merely because poor Taylor had skipped a communications class that morning. No matter that the kid was sufficiently contrite. "Aw, man, I got a great test grade in that class last time," said the 6'3" freshman, who learned his game right next door in Lansing. "I thought I could get away with missing this one. Yeah, I knew Magic and Mateen [not to mention a congregation of pro scouts] were here, and I wanted to show what I got. But I was waiting to get wrapped before practice and..."

So here was Cleaves, now a Detroit Piston, preparing for an exhibition game in Breslin that night. ("I tell Marcus: Don't try to be Magic, don't try to be Mateen, just be hisself.") And there was Johnson, waiting patiently in the stands. ("I've watched Marcus play since the fifth grade. I came to talk to him about leadership. Where is that young fella?") Meanwhile, Izzo was in Taylor's face, conveying this message: Don't even bother.

Uh-oh. What's this? A crack in the armor of the defending national champs? State's other prize yearling, 6'9", 270-pound Zach Randolph, had arrived on campus with a reputation as a questionable qualifier and gurrunner (and we don't mean a guy who shoots a lot). Now his roommate, Taylor, was blowing off his education? On the surface, this would all seem to mirror the state of amateur basketball these days. While other would-be members of the 2000-01 freshman class were logging themselves onto the NBA, the most highly acclaimed teammates to enter college since Michigan's Fab Five turn up Almost (In)Famous.

Happily, image isn't everything. Taylor, the shorter, quieter half of the "T and Z Show," is a 3.0 student who grew up just a few miles away from campus -- the polite son of a close-knit General Motors family that would no sooner let him slide academically than let him drive a Toyota. As for T's good buddy Randolph, not only was he the starting center on the silver-winning U.S. team at last summer's Championship of the Americas in Brazil, but his moon-faced, jovial charisma so enthralled his teammates that national coach Jim Boeheim called him "Babe," as in Ruth. "Huge upper body, stick legs, that chubby head -- the kid just lights up a room," Boeheim says. "Everybody loved him. And down low he is an absolute monster. He has those lefthanded post moves that are practically unstoppable, and he eats up the offensive glass. Of course, when I called him Babe, Zach had no idea who I was talking about."

Taylor was the last player Boeheim cut from the national squad. "I should have kept him," the Syracuse coach says. "We needed his shooting. The people in East Lansing won't like me saying this, but he's going to make them forget Cleaves in a real hurry." (One would hope that won't include Izzo, who named his newly adopted son Steven Mateen -- after Cleaves and 49ers coach Steve Mariucci, his boyhood pal from Iron Mountain in the northern part of Michigan.)

Taylor has been a Spartan through and through since long before Izzo elevated this program to new and wondrous heights. As a young man just off the bus from Louisiana, Taylor's father, James, became friends with Earvin Johnson Sr., a fellow worker at the GM plant. The fathers would sit together and watch young Earvin Jr. star at Everett High in Lansing -- James Taylor still calls Magic "Junior" -- just as they would watch young Marcus break Magic's city scoring record at Waverly High a generation later.

"The funny thing is," says Magic, "our dads are alike and we're alike in a lot of ways, both on and off the court. I don't look at what young kids can do offensively. I watch for their intellect in the game -- knowing when to pass, to cut, to beat your man off the dribble; who to set up, where and how. Remember, Marcus was playing pickup with all us State boys [Steve Smith, Shawn Respert, Eric Snow] when he was like 14. In high school, he was better as a shooter and scorer than I ever was. But it was his mind, his thinking, that was remarkable. His knowledge always was older than his age. My dad is so excited. With Marcus here -- oh my goodness! -- it's like me being out there again."

Taylor's earliest influence was his own father, who stressed individual workouts -- not crowded camps or all-star tournaments -- and focused on shooting. "We started with a small-sized ball and the proper technique," James says. "Most kids begin with bad habits and get screwed up from there." Cleaves was a notorious rock hurler; the infant Johnson even worse, if that's possible. Taylor? Score one for the new guy. "Marcus is our best shooter already," Izzo says.

If anything, it is Taylor's laid-back personality that concerns Izzo, whose team could always bank on Cleaves' blue-collar grit and loud direction even when injuries confined him to the bench. "I don't go for this 'lead by example' crap anymore," Izzo says. "Not after Mateen. If a kid can't dribble, we coach him out of it. If a kid's not strong, we hammer him with weights. If a kid can't lead, we say that's just him? Sorry. That's a cop-out. If I think Marcus is too reserved or bashful or tentative, we're going to get it out of him. We don't need silence around here."

No wonder Magic can't stop grinning. "You think I was like this in high school?" he bursts out in his famous high-pitched squeal. "I was shy and quiet before I got here. College basketball changes you. This is where your personality forms. With all the fans and the media, you have to get outgoing right away. I told Marcus, when you have the ball at this level, you've got to lead with your mouth as much as your play."

Thanks to the constant reminders from Magic, Izzo and seniors Charlie Bell and Andre Hutson, Taylor is becoming more comfortable speaking up and leading the veteran Spartans. "I can't believe Magic was ever shier than me," he says. "But everybody says I'm improving in that area. Mateen and I play totally different games. People have called me a point guard with a jump shot [ouch!], and I've won championships using my style. It feels like I've been playing with these guys forever, so I think we'll be okay."

While Taylor grew up as both a high-profile prodigy and protégé, Randolph bloomed late in obscure Marion, Ind. He was just another body ("the Pillsbury Doughboy," laughs Izzo) on the recruiting lists until he exploded last spring, first dominating in the state tourney, then earning MVP honors in three different all-star games against the best prep players. But in truth, T discovered Z long before America did. "It was at my only summer camp, after sophomore year," Taylor says. "This huge dude is motoring down the court, killing guys. He got all the rebounds, scored at will. My dad and I look at each other, and we're thinking the same thing: We've got to talk to this guy."

It was mutual admiration right from the start. "The special thing I noticed about T is that he works so hard," Z says. "I needed to be around that kind of person. We're opposite personalities, but I draw him out. He gives me focus. I wanted to play with a great guard, and he's all that."

Randolph's single mother, Mae, was all for her son moving from their tough neighborhood in Marion to leafy Lansing, where James and Kay Taylor have taken Zach in as another member of their family. Things weren't so warm and fuzzy during his junior year, when he pleaded guilty to two counts of receiving stolen property. Seems a friend had brought two handguns to Z's house, leading to Zach's arrest on possession charges. He served 30 days in detention and "picked up trash as community service ... you've got to mention this?" he interrupts himself. "A lot of people do dark stuff when they're younger. But I've learned from it. It was my fault. It was a long time ago. It's over."

Back then, the pursuit of Randolph was truly over for a number of recruiters, including those from the state university in Bloomington, whose then-coach might have related to "dark stuff" but never seemed all that interested. Michigan State stayed the course. "We didn't take Zach when he first wanted to commit," Izzo says. "I wanted to check out the gun thing. The rumor was he had sold guns. That never happened. But I had gotten to know him. This was way out of character. He's not a bad kid. What really convinced me was how James Taylor supported him. The guy runs his family like a boot camp. He wanted his son to play with Zach, to run with him, to be his roommate. He would never put Marcus in position to be anywhere near any trouble."

As James Taylor remembers it: "We met with Zach. I didn't ask him details, but I was pleased with what came out of it. He said he'd messed up and he'd never do it again. Marcus told him, ?Look, you can't do this kind of stuff. It's time you put a shield around yourself.' We feel we have some influence. Zach sees me coming now, he tucks his shirttail in."

Though Randolph's test scores failed to meet NCAA standards for freshman eligibility, MSU appealed and won because the player previously had been diagnosed with a learning disability. "I'm doing better in class than I've ever done," he says.

Back on the court is a different story. Ever the cynical grinch, Izzo says Randolph "hasn't got a clue of what he needs to do to get as good as his hype." Moreover, the coach contends, his new guard-center combo could close the scoring and charisma gap left by the departed Cleaves and Mo Peterson only with a lot of time and an expanded work ethic. "It's hard for the others to respect these young guys the same as they did Mateen, because he was not only our toughest player but our hardest worker," Izzo says. "Anything Mateen told the guys to do, they did it, because they knew he was willing to do more of it."

Then again, some of Izzo's own players are contributing to the hype. Here's Jason Richardson, the Spartans' high-leaping sophomore -- the same guy who scorched the Dream Team for 19 points in one half of an exhibition -- critiquing Randolph's game: "He has the strength of Anthony Mason and the inside post moves of Hakeem Olajuwon."

Leave it to Hutson, the squad's workhorse power forward, to put the two freshmen in proper perspective. "They really respect the upperclassmen," he says. "They listen to us. They know they haven't been through the wars like we have. We've got the rings. Now they've got to contribute so we can get another one."

The precocious moves and fancy McDonald's All-American credentials seemed few and far away as Michigan State went through preseason preparations the day the three M's met their match in Izzo. Taylor, of course, was off somewhere licking his wounds, having been tossed from practice before it began. So now the coach could rail away exclusively at Randolph, whose massive body was taking a beating from a succession of alternating Spartan veterans. "Zach, can't you guard one single human being?" Izzo roared. "Oh, right! No wonder you're getting your %$#@$#! butt kicked! You're a %$#@$#! freshman!"

True, but if T and Z can somehow recover from their rookie abuse and play like anything more than freshmen... oh my goodness, those Spartans might work their Magic again.

This article appears in the November 27 issue of ESPN The Magazine.