Jim Valvano

Jim Valvano

Biographical details
Born	(1946-03-10)March 10, 1946 Corona, Queens, New York
Died	April 28, 1993(1993-04-28) (aged 47) Durham, North Carolina
Alma mater	Rutgers University
Playing career
Position(s)	Point guard
Head coaching record
Overall	346–210 (.622)
Accomplishments and honors
Championships
NCAA Division I Tournament Champion: 1983 ACC Tournament Champion: 1983, 1987
Awards
1989 ACC Coach of The Year Arthur Ashe Courage Award Cable ACE Award for Commentator/Analyst

James Thomas Anthony "Jim" Valvano (March 10, 1946 – April 28, 1993), nicknamed Jimmy V, was an American college basketball coach and broadcaster.

While the head basketball coach at North Carolina State University, he won the 1983 NCAA Basketball Tournament against long odds. Valvano is not only remembered for running up and down the court after winning the 1983 NCAA championship, seemingly in disbelief and looking for someone to hug, but also for his inspirational 1993 ESPY Awards speech, given just eight weeks before he died of cancer.

Biography

Personal

Valvano was the middle child of Rocco and Angelina Valvano, and was born in Corona, Queens, New York. Valvano was a three-sport athlete at Seaford High School in Seaford on Long Island and graduated in 1963. He married his high school sweetheart, Pamela Levine, and they had three daughters: Nicole, Jamie, and Lee Ann. His younger brother Bob is a sportscaster and former basketball coach.

Football coach Vince Lombardi was Valvano's role model. Valvano told an ESPY audience, on March 3, 1993, that he took some of Lombardi's inspirational speeches out of his book Commitment to Excellence, and used them with his team. Valvano discussed how he planned to use Lombardi's speech to the Green Bay Packers in front of his Rutgers freshman basketball team prior to his first game as their coach.

College playing career

Valvano was a point guard at Rutgers University in 1967, where he partnered with first-team All-American Bob Lloyd in the backcourt. Under the leadership of Valvano and Lloyd, Rutgers finished third in the 1967 National Invitation Tournament (NIT), which was the last basketball tournament held at the old Madison Square Garden. (The 1967 NCAA Tournament field was just 23 teams and the NIT invited 14 teams.) He was named Senior Athlete of the Year at Rutgers in 1967, and graduated with a degree in English in 1967.

Coaching career

Following graduation, Valvano began his coaching career at Rutgers as the freshman coach and assistant for the varsity. His 19-year career as a head basketball coach began at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore for a season; he was then an assistant at Connecticut for two years. Following that, he became the head coach at Bucknell, Iona, and North Carolina State. Following Norm Sloan's departure to Florida, Valvano was hired at NC State on March 27, 1980, and made his debut on November 29, when the Wolfpack defeated UNC-Wilmington 83-59. During his 10 year NC State career, Valvano's teams were the ACC Tournament Champions in 1983 and 1987 and the ACC regular season champions in 1985 and 1989. The Wolfpack won the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship in 1983, in addition to advancing to the NCAA Elite 8 in 1985 and 1986. 'Coach V' was voted ACC Coach of the Year in 1989. Valvano became NC State's athletic director in 1986. His overall record at NC State was 209–114 (.647) and his career record as a head coach was 346–210 (.622).

Valvano's famous reaction of running around on the court looking for somebody to hug in the moments after the Wolfpack victory came after the game-winning shot in the 1983 NCAA finals. Dereck Whittenburg heaved a last-second desperation shot that was caught short of the rim and dunked by Lorenzo Charles as time expired. By a score of 54–52, NC State beat a top seeded University of Houston team that was on a 26-game winning streak and was led by future Basketball Hall of Famers Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon. Previously, NC State won the college basketball championship in 1974 under Sloan; the Wolfpack ended UCLA's streak of seven consecutive national titles when it beat the Bruins 80-77 in overtime in the national semi-final game.

Head coaching record

Statistics overview

Season	Team	Overall	Conference	Standing	Postseason
Johns Hopkins Blue Jays (Middle Atlantic Conference) (1969–1970)
1969–1970	Johns Hopkins	10–9
Johns Hopkins:		10–9
Bucknell Bison (Middle Atlantic Conference) (1972–1975)
1972–1973	Bucknell	11–14	6–4	T-2nd
1973–1974	Bucknell	8–16	2–8	T-5th
1974–1975	Bucknell	14–12	4–4	T-3rd
Bucknell:		33–42	12–16
Iona Gaels (Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference) (1975–1980)
1975–1976	Iona	11–15
1976–1977	Iona	15–10
1977–1978	Iona	17–10
1978–1979	Iona	23–6			NCAA 1st Round
1979–1980	Iona	28–4			NCAA 2nd Round
Iona:		94–45
North Carolina State Wolfpack (Atlantic Coast Conference) (1980–1990)
1980–1981	NC State	14–13	4–10	7th
1981–1982	NC State	22–10	7–7	4th	NCAA 1st Round
1982–1983	NC State	26–10	8–6	T–3rd	NCAA Champions
1983–1984	NC State	19–14	4–10	7th	NIT 1st Round
1984–1985	NC State	23–10	9–5	T–1st	NCAA Elite Eight
1985–1986	NC State	21–13	7–7	T–4th	NCAA Elite Eight
1986–1987	NC State	20–15	6–8	6th	NCAA 1st Round
1987–1988	NC State	24–8	10–4	2nd	NCAA 1st Round
1988–1989	NC State	22–9	10–4	1st	NCAA Sweet 16
1989–1990	NC State	18–12	6–8	T–5th
NC State:		209–114	71–69
Total:		346–210
National champion         Postseason invitational champion         Conference regular season champion         Conference regular season and conference tournament champion       Division regular season champion       Division regular season and conference tournament champion       Conference tournament champion

Controversy

In 1990, accusations of rules violations surfaced in the book Personal Fouls by Peter Golenbock. These accusations centered mostly on high school All-American Chris Washburn, who managed only a 470 out of 1600 on his SAT (with 400 being the starting score). A 1989 NCAA investigation cleared Valvano, but found that players sold shoes and game tickets. As a result, NC State placed its basketball program on probation for two years (the maximum) and was banned from participating in the 1990 NCAA tournament. The state-appointed Poole Commission issued a 32-page report that concluded that there were no major violations of NCAA regulations, and that Valvano and his staff's inadequate oversight of players' academic progress violated "the spirit, not the letter of the law." After this report, Valvano was forced to resign as the school's athletic director in October 1989. He remained as basketball coach through the 1989–1990 season. Under subsequent pressure from the school's faculty and new Chancellor, Valvano negotiated a settlement with NC State and resigned as basketball coach on April 7, 1990. Six separate entities investigated Valvano and the NC State basketball program including the NC State Faculty Senate, the North Carolina Attorney General, the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, the NC State Board of Trustees, and the NCAA. None of them found any recruiting or financial improprieties. However, a school investigation did reveal that Valvano's student athletes did not perform well in the classroom, as only 11 of the players that he coached prior to 1988 had maintained an average of C or better. This was perhaps due to his persistence in recruiting students deemed to be "academic exceptions."

Valvano's version of these events can be found in his 1991 autobiography, Valvano: They Gave Me a Lifetime Contract, and Then They Declared Me Dead.

After coaching

After his coaching career, Valvano was a broadcaster for ESPN and ABC Sports, including a stint as a sideline reporter for the inaugural season of the World League of American Football. In 1992, Valvano won a Cable ACE Award for Commentator/Analyst for NCAA basketball broadcasts. From time to time he was paired with basketball analyst Dick Vitale, dubbed the "Killer Vees", with similar voices and exuberant styles. The two even made a cameo appearance, playing the role of professional movers (V&V Movers), on an episode of The Cosby Show.

Valvano created JTV enterprises to guide many of his entrepreneurial endeavors. He gave hundreds of motivational speeches across the country and was a featured guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Late Night with David Letterman.

One of Valvano's most memorable motivational speeches was delivered February 21, 1993 at Reynolds Coliseum on NCSU's basketball court during the ten-year commemoration of the university's 1983 NCAA championship. It was during this speech that Valvano stressed the importance of hope, love and persistence, and included his famous "Don't give up, don't ever give up" quotation.

ESPY speech

Watch Jim Valvano's ESPY speech on the foundation's website, here.

Valvano was diagnosed with metastatic adenocarcinoma, a type of cancer, in June 1992.

On March 3, 1993, shortly before his death, he spoke at the first ESPY Awards, presented by ESPN. While accepting the inaugural Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award, he announced the creation of The V Foundation for Cancer Research, an organization dedicated to finding a cure for cancer. He announced that the foundation's motto would be "Don't Give Up . . . Don't Ever Give Up." During his speech the teleprompter stated that he had 30 seconds left, to which Valvano responded, "They got that screen up there flashing 30 seconds, like I care about that screen. I got tumors all over my body and I'm worried about some guy in the back going 30 seconds." His speech included this statement:

To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.

Valvano's memorable ESPY acceptance speech became legendary. He closed by saying:

"Cancer can take away all of my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart, and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever. I thank you and God bless you all."

He received a standing ovation from the ESPY crowd.

Valvano's hair was expected to fall out with chemotherapy treatment, but it didn't. Along with his ever-positive outlook, this masked to the public how serious his sickness was and the amount of pain he was dealing with. He had preemptively had his head shaved and was prepared to use a variety of whimsical wigs on his broadcasts. But his own hair remained.

Yankees

New York native Valvano had always wanted to throw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium. He had been given that honor for the 1993 season opener to be held on April 12,[1] but he was too ill to do so. Coaching rival and friend Dean Smith substituted for Valvano.

Death

Valvano died less than two months after his famous ESPY speech, after a ten-month battle with bone cancer. Valvano died at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina on April 28, 1993. He is buried in the Cedar Hill Section of Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh. His tombstone reads: "Take time every day to laugh, to think, to cry."

Lorenzo Charles, the player who scored the winning basket in the 1983 NCAA championship game, died in a bus crash on June 27, 2011 and was buried in proximity to Valvano in Oakwood Cemetery. Charles was 47 years old at the time of his death; the same age as Valvano.

Legacy

A 1996 TV movie titled Never Give Up: The Jimmy V Story, starred Anthony LaPaglia as Valvano. The movie was filmed in various locations including Wilmington, North Carolina and on the campus of the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

In 1993, Valvano was inducted into the Rutgers Basketball Hall of Fame. In 1999, Valvano was inducted into both the Hall of Distinguished Alumni at Rutgers University and the New York City Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2004, Valvano was inducted into the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame. In 2012, he was named to the first class of the NC State Athletics Hall of Fame.

In 2013, ESPN's 30 for 30 Films created a film about North Carolina State's 1983 Championship run, called Survive and Advance. Along with the 1983 season, it also covered the final months of his life against cancer. In 2014, fellow cancer sufferer and broadcaster Stuart Scott was awarded in his honor for his own ongoing, inspirational fight against cancer.

References

• Cairns, Bob (2005). V & Me: Everybody's Favorite Jim Valvano Story. Alexander, NC: Alexander Books. ISBN 978-1-57090-229-1.
• Cole, Marcus (Director); Greenman, Adam (Writer) (1996). Never Give Up: The Jimmy V Story (Motion picture (made for television)). Sherman Oaks, CA: Daniel H. Blatt Productions.
• ESPN (1993). ESPY Awards (Television). Bristol, CT: ESPN Original Entertainment.
• Towle, Mike (2001). I Remember Jim Valvano: Personal Reflections and Anecdotes About College Basketball's Most Exuberant Final Four Coach, As Told by the People and Players Who Knew Him. Nashville, TN: Cumberland House Publishing. ISBN 978-1-58182-219-9.
• Valvano, Bob (2001). The Gifts of Jimmy V: A Coach's Legacy. Chicago, IL: Triumph Books. ISBN 978-1-892049-30-8.
• Valvano, Jim; Kirkpatrick, Curry (1992). Valvano: They Gave Me a Lifetime Contract, and Then They Declared Me Dead. New York, NY: Pocket Books. ISBN 978-0-671-73254-7.
• Wojnarowski, Adrian (2008). Jimmy V: The Life and Death of Jim Valvano. New York, NY: Gotham Books. ISBN 978-1-59240-354-7.

External links

• V Foundation for Cancer Research
• ESPY Award Speech by Jim Valvano - Video & Full Transcript
• ESPY Award Address in Text, Audio, Video
• Jim Valvano Timeline
• Jim Valvano at Findagrave.com
• National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame