Remembering the great Jim Valvano – a champion on and off the court
At the inaugural ESPY Awards on March 4, 1993, Jim Valvano received the Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award.
In return, he delivered one of the most memorable acceptance speeches of all-time.
“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.”
Jim Valvano, better known as Jimmy V, passed away less than two months after this ESPY moment – on April 28, to be exact – after losing his battle with adenocarcinoma, a glandular form of cancer.
To this day, the ESPYs awards the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance to an athlete that has overcome obstacles during their journey to success.
Valvano spent a decade as the head coach at North Carolina State, between 1980 and 1990. He oversaw the Wolfpack‘s upset win over the University of Houston in the 1983 national championship game.
On this date in 1983, Jim Valvano’s NC State won the national title with a victory over Houston. pic.twitter.com/0vu873NXaf
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) April 4, 2015
You remember that game, even if you don’t realize you do.
It ended with this famous rebound-putback:
April 4, 1983: Lorenzo Charles puts back a Dereck Whittenburg airball and NC State stuns Houston 54-52 for NCAA championship #ThisDayInGIFs pic.twitter.com/8LYMXHkJN0
— New York Post Sports (@nypostsports) April 4, 2017
However, the most memorable image that came out of that 1983 buzzer-beater moment is Valvano taking the floor to celebrate:
With the win – and that celebration – Valvano became legend, especially considering NC State was a huge underdog entering the game.
Through the first four rounds of the tournament, the 6-seed Wolfpack defeated 11-seed Pepperdine by 2 in the round of 64, 3-seed UNLV by 1 in the round of 32, 1-seed Virginia by 1 in the Elite 8, and 4-seed Georgia by 7 in the Final Four.
Houston – a 1-seed featuring the likes of future NBA legends Akeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler – was a true juggernaut. The Cougars beat 3-seed Villanova by 18 in the Elite 8 and fellow 1-seed Louisville by 13 in the Final Four.
On Feb. 21, 1993, at the 10-year reunion of the NCAA title victory, Valvano returned to NC State and delivered a memorable speech to fans on-hand regarding the Wolfpack’s upset win:
That speech took place less than two weeks before Valvano’s ESPYs speech.
Long live Jimmy V.
