As Time Runs Out

The basketball game was nearly over now. Valvano's mind and tongue were still flying, the jokes still crackling, but a deep fatigue was coming over his body. He looked across the court and saw his wife speaking to a woman beside her, saw his wife smile. And he thought: It's so good to see her smile, but how many times have I seen her crying lately? What's going to happen to her? Will she be all right? He would take a deep swallow of air the next day as he remembered that moment, that look across the court at her as the coaches shouted and the players panted and the fans roared. "You see, I had it all planned for our 25th anniversary, last August 6. I was going to give her three gifts: the deed to four acres where she could build her dream house, a big diamond ring, and a nice trip, just the two of us on a beach. She'd lift me up when she heard it and I'd cut the nets, a standing O.... Goddam. What did she get instead? A sick husband in a hospital bed getting Mitomycin, Cisplatin and Velban dripped into him. She got to clean me up when I vomited. That's love. I'd told her, 'We're going to get old together, Pam.' Probably the nicest thing I'd ever said to her. 'We're going to get old together'.... Goddam.... Goddam."

The game ended, and then he did something he had never done before. He thanked the hundred fans who had gathered to wish him well, said no to the coaches who asked if he would like to go out...and went back to his hotel room with his wife. She fell asleep, and he lay there at 1 a.m., alone, hungry for food and wine, hungry for conversation he was missing, and the laughter. He ordered a pizza, stared at the TV and cried.

He jumped from his seat one day not long ago. The backside of his pants didn't rip—they weren't that tight anymore. A paragraph had jumped into his eyes from a book he was reading. "That is why athletics are important," wrote a British sportswriter named Brian Glanville. "They demonstrate the scope of human possibility, which is unlimited. The inconceivable is conceived, and then it is accomplished."

"That's it!" cried Vee. "That's why we strive! That's the value of sports! All those games, they mean nothing—and they mean everything" His fist clenched. He hadn't poured himself into emptiness for 23 years, he hadn't devoured Justus Thigpen's stats for nothing, he hadn't. The people who compared his upset of Houston to his fight against cancer were right!

"It's what I've got to do to stay alive," he said. "I've got to find the unlimited scope of human possibility within myself. I've got to conceive the inconceivable—then accomplish it! My mom's convinced I'm going to get better. My mom's always right!"

In early December, when the pain grew so fierce he had to call off a weekend of studio work for ESPN, he had a local shop print up 1,000 small cards. He had hundreds of people across the country calling him, writing him, encouraging him, but he needed more, VICTORIES it said on each card. "Valvano's Incredible Cancer Team of Really Important Extraordinary Stars."

"See?" he said. "I'm going to make a team. I'm going to give a card to everyone I meet as I go around the country doing games. On the back of each card are the requirements of my players. One, they have to say, 'Jimmy Vee, you will make it." Two, they have to say it out loud—it's important to verbalize. They can call my office number and, if I'm not there, leave a message on my answering machine: 'Jimmy, don't give up!' And three, they have to do something to improve their own health, whether it's mental, spiritual or physical.

"My own team—everybody can join. This is it, baby, my ultimate pregame talk. I need this one, gotta have it. Gotta have so many people calling my answering machine each day that they can't get through. Gotta have people all over the country opening their windows and shouting it out: "JIMMY VEEEEEE! DON'T GIVE UP!' "