He couldn’t make it. He was ready to give up.
Halfway up the 23 stairs that lead from the basement of Reynolds Coliseum to the wooden court where he coached for 10 seasons, former NC State coach Jim Valvano told his friend and longtime Wolfpack golf coach Richard Sykes and assistant facilities manager Shannon Yates that there was no way he could make it the rest of the way.
Just a few minutes before, he had been laying on a training table, nauseous from the cancer that wracked his entire body, the sickness that made it difficult for a person known for being so full of life to live from day to day.
He had just enough energy to swing his legs over the table, stand up and put on his tailored ABC navy blue sports jacket, but halfway up the stairs, he could go no further.
On this day 25 years ago, a standing-room only mass of NC State fans and a small contingent of Duke supporters gathered more than an hour before tip-off for what was ostensibly billed as a 10-year anniversary celebration of Valvano’s biggest miracle, the 1983 Cardiac Pack.
In reality, though, it was Jim Valvano Day, with the former coach returning to broadcast a nationally televised game between the Wolfpack and Mike Krzyzewski’s Duke Blue Devils.
The coach had parted ways — against his will — from the university where he had a lifetime contract as men’s basketball coach and athletics director following the 1989-90 season, under the cloud of multiple investigations into his program.
His biggest crime? Valvano, college basketball’s highest paid coach and a multi-media entrepreneur, had become bigger than the program, maybe even bigger than the university. The loudest voices that called for his resignation were shouted from the local newspaper and from the UNC Board of Governors.
On this day, however, three years had passed since Valvano’s name was not exactly cleared, but at least exonerated from the most serious allegations from a poorly sourced book that had started an avalanche of criticism and a full-program enema that turned up what turned out to be secondary process violations.
It was long after the one-year NCAA probation had been served, and some three years into Valvano’s college broadcasting career with partners like Dick Vitale and Brent Musburger.
Musburger was waiting up on the court, along with Valvano’s successor, Les Robinson, football coach Dick Sheridan and Wolfpack Club executive secretary Charlie Bryant, waiting to present Valvano a glass slipper that symbolized perhaps the most improbable national title in college basketball history.
Most of the 1983 champion players and support staff were there, though title game hero Lorenzo Charles and center Cozell McQueen were unable to attend because they were still playing professionally overseas. McQueen sent 100 roses to Valvano’s wife Pam to express his absence and disappointment. Thurl Bailey was supposed to be there, but a flight delay from Utah threatened his pregame arrival.
And everyone was about to be greatly disappointed, because Valvano was physically unable to make it up the stairs.
Half way up, however, he heard it: The rumble of the crowd, something Valvano could never ignore.
The former coach asked Sykes, who also served as the coliseum manager, and Yates to help him get there. They took him by his frail elbows and practically carried him the rest of the way.
With each ascending stair, the din in the Coliseum got louder. Like dozens of players before him, each step provided greater inspiration and motivation to climb to the top, to reach for an unreachable goal.
Waiting with tissues in hand, the crowd exploded when the coach appeared in the corner and made his way to midcourt. He hugged Robinson, Sheridan and Bryant. He led the fans in an acapella version of the fight song. Through tears, at the appropriate place, they all yelled “Go State!”
“That’s power,” Valvano said. “That’s power.”
And then, after telling the story of how he arrived in Raleigh and immediately went to the wrong Greenville for a Wolfpack Club dinner, Valvano looked to his players and began a speech that became familiar at the ESPY Awards on ESPN but originated in Reynolds Coliseum.
“Let me tell you what the ‘83 team means to me,” he began. “They are special not because they put that banner up there, they’re special because they taught me and the world so many important lessons.
“Number one, hope — hope that things can get better, in spite of adversity. The ’83 team taught us that when Dereck Whittenburg went down and everybody said there is no way we could win. A kid named Ernie Myers stepped in and we lost a few, then we won a few and then Dereck came back.
“One sportswriter said — I remember my favorite quote was that ‘trees would tap dance, elephants would drive in the Indianapolis 500, and Orson Welles would skip breakfast, lunch and dinner before NC State figure out a way to win the NCAA Tournament.’
“Well, this team taught me that elephants are going to be driving in the Indy 500 someday. They taught me to hope.
“The ’83 team taught me about dreaming, and the importance of dreams, because nothing can happen if not first a dream. If you have someone with a dream, if you have a motivated person with a goal and a vision, if you have someone who never gives up, who has great hope, anything can happen. That team taught me that persistence, the idea of never, ever quitting.
“Don’t give up! Don’t ever give up!”
Valvano spoke individually to every member of the sell-out crowd, whether he knew it or not.
“The ’83 team gave you hope, gave you pride, told you what hard work was about,” he said. “It gave you the meaning of believing in a cause.
“And lastly, what they taught me, which is so important, is to love each other. We don’t talk enough about that in sports, but I can tell you, if you ask me what was said along the line as we went down the row [to greet each player], that word love was used most of the time. As in, ‘Coach, I love ya.’ As in me saying, “Thurl, I love ya.’ And ‘Terry, I love ya.’ And ‘Whitt, I love ya.’
“They taught me what love means. When you have a goal, when you have a dream and when you throw in that concept of never stop believing and loving each other, you can accomplish miracles. And that’s what the ’83 team taught [us].”
By this time, game start was less than a half-hour away. Krzyzewski and his team weren’t yet on the court. Neither team had warmed up. Valvano tried to wrap up quickly, something he was not good at, as he showed a few weeks later at the ESPY’s.
But his final message to the Wolfpack faithful was about his — and maybe one day their — fight against cancer.
“Today, I fight a different battle. You see I have trouble walking, and I do; and I have trouble standing for a long period of time, and I do,” he said.
“Cancer has taken away a lot of my physical abilities. I can’t run over there and yell at John Moreau, the referee, like I’d like to. I can’t do the backflips like I to do with our world-class cheerleaders. I can’t do those things anymore. But cancer cannot touch my mind, my heart and my soul.
“It can’t touch those things.”
After giving special shout-outs to Sheridan, Bryant, Musburger and Robinson, Valvano brought the tearful pregame celebration to an end.
“… if by chance the Lord wants me, he’s going to get the best damned broadcaster and ex-basketball coach that they’ve ever had up there, I’ll tell you that.”
As the crowd wildly cheered, Valvano began to hum the fight song one last time, ending with a crescendo of “Go State!”
He made his final, famous speech at the ESPY’s on March 4, getting up the stairs that night with Vitale’s help. His final broadcast was three nights later at the season-finale Duke-North Carolina contest in Chapel Hill.
By then, Valvano and ESPN had announced the formation of the V Foundation for Cancer Research, a charitable organization that has now raised more than $200 million in the hopes of finding a cure for all kinds of cancer, including the kind that took Valvano’s life on April 28, 1993.
Many of Valvano’s speeches are available on YouTube, but perhaps the best way to see and remember that day 25 years ago is in the Reynolds Coliseum Walk of Fame and History, where all 28 minutes can be viewed on a second-level interactive kiosk.
You have to take the stairs to get there, and that may create a wealth of difficulties for each of us.
Don’t give up.
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