COLUMBIA, S.C. –  Alex English was the greatest Nuggets player Doug Moe coached, but he still got yelled at plenty.

English starred for the Nuggets from 1979-90, his final 10 seasons spent with Moe as head coach. Never mind that the forward averaged 25.9 points with Denver and made eight NBA All-Star Games.

“He would cuss guys out left and right during games but after the game he would go back to being Doug Moe,” English told The Denver Gazette on Saturday, four days after the legendary Nuggets coach died Tuesday at age 87. “The other guys on the team say that Doug never got on my case, but he did. He would tell me to ‘pass the ball, shoot the ball,’ or ‘you got to play defense,’ or ‘you get that rebound.’ That was important. He knew what my superpower was.”

English spoke about Moe following South Carolina’s 97-89 win Saturday over Mississippi State at Colonial Life Arena. English, who starred for the Gamecocks from 1972-76, lives in the Columbia area and is on South Carolina’s Board of Trustees.

English, 72, learned about Moe’s death when he received a text Tuesday from a longtime Nuggets fan.

“I had a moment of reflection,” English said. “Doug was a great coach. I really, really, really enjoyed playing with him. And he was a friend as well.”

Moe went 432-357 with the fast-breaking Nuggets from 1980-90, and they made the playoffs in nine of his 10 seasons. After Moe was fired in 1990, the Nuggets didn’t re-sign English and he spent his final NBA season with Dallas in 1990-91.

English later became a longtime NBA assistant with Atlanta, Philadelphia, Toronto and Sacramento and often saw Moe on his NBA travels. That included Moe’s return to the Denver bench as an assistant coach from 2005-08 under George Karl.

English last saw Moe, who lived in San Antonio and died there, when he spent his final season as an NBA assistant with the Kings in 2012-13.

“He had a long run,’’ English said. “He had a great run. We’ll miss him. But I think he had a great life.”

Moe played a key role in English developing into a player who would make the Basketball Hall of Fame. After being a second-round pick in 1976 by Milwaukee, he had meager averages of 5.2 and 9.6 points in two seasons with the Bucks.

English averaged 16.0 points with Indiana in 1978-79 and he put up 21.3 in the second half of the 1979-80 season with Denver after being acquired for forward George McGinnis. But English really erupted after Moe arrived in 1980-81, first as an assistant coach and then as the head coach after Donnie Walsh was fired 31 games into the season.

“His offense gave me an opportunity to really expound on my game because the limitations, the rules, were really simple,” said English, who led the NBA in scoring in 1982-83 with a 28.4 average. “Everybody (on the team) knew what we were going to do and we did it that way and we were very successful.”

English said some of the keys to Moe’s motion offense were the “wings being at the free-throw line extended” and the center at the “high elbow.” He called it a “rolling offense” that was designed to find holes in the defense.

The Nuggets averaged an NBA-record 126.5 points per game in 1981-82. But English scoffed at the notion that Moe’s teams didn’t play much defense.

“That’s a misconception,’’ English said. “If you look at the guys on our team, we had guys like (guards) Fat Lever and T.R. Dunn who were up there in steals and (center) Wayne Cooper with blocked shots. You still have to stop the other team from scoring points, and we did that. So Doug focused hard on defense. I even considered myself a decent defensive player.”

English said it’s no misconception, though, that players on the Nuggets got an earful from Moe during games.

“He was a very intense coach,” English said. “He got on my case, too. I was just getting the feel of being an NBA player (when Moe took over as Denver’s coach) and Doug’s offense really gave me an opportunity to not just be a scorer but to be a passer. … But my main job was to put the ball in the basket, and that’s what I did.”