I friggin’ love YouTube for finds like this, an ESPN preview of the 1983 National Championship game:
Check it out. You’ll see glimpses of Valvano’s love for life, his passion for the game as well as his perspective about the relative importance of basketball in life, his pre-game instruction to “have fun” (something that the current Wolfpack coach must have learned from him) — and you’ll even see Sidney Lowe mimicking his walk!
Some highlights:
* Valvano on what he told the players before the game: “I can stand up there and tell them, ‘This is the most important thing in your life you’ve ever done! This is it! This is what’s going to give meaning to your life! This is everything!’ Or I could tell them what I do tell them, is that ‘For 40 minutes, I want you to think that this is the most important thing that you possibly could do. Soon as the buzzer goes off, when you go to the lockerroom, I want you to understand the relative unimportance of what you’ve done.”
* Reporter Schaap: “Other coaches try to shield their players, even isolate them. But Jimmy V [image from practice shows Dereck Whittenburg bear-hugging V] encourages his Wolfpack to howl, to have fun…” Whittenburg: “Curfew? We don’t have a curfew here.” Schaap: “… to chat cheerfully with armies of reporters …” Cozell McQueen: “How is he to coach? (Laughs) How is he to coach? The coach is always loose, man.” Schaap: “… to sign autographs, to savor the moment in the spotlight.” Valvano: “I tell them, it’s not going to happen often, you know, when you get out, no one’s going to put ABC cameras on you, you know? Dick Schaap’s not going to come talk to anybody, you know, at work? Enjoy it! Have fun! I am.”
* Valvano: “Basketball is not fun in North Carolina, at North Carolina State. It’s serious business. It took us a while to get used to each other.”
* Valvano: “We practice cutting the nets down every year. I have these gold scissors [pulls scissors out of blue velvet-encased box] that we use. We save these for one thing: that’s for the national one.”
* Valvano: “It’s my job to have the kids from 18 to 22, which is what I get, that they should enjoy it, that they should look back and say, ‘That was a great four years.'”
* Reporter Schaap: “Valvano is also a realist.” Valvano: “It’ll never be where all you have to do is turn out good solid citizens. No, this is a competitive world, this is college athletics. … You’re going to have to win, too.”
* Reporter Schaap: “Jimmy V wanted very much to win yesterday against favored Georgia. The crowd in Albuquerque included the parents of State stars and Valvano’s own wife and children. Coach V delivered a pre-game speech that wasn’t quite ‘Win it for the Gipper.'” McQueen, quoting V: “‘Go out and have fun; don’t be tense; just go have fun. Play ball.'”
* Reporter Schaap: “If State loses to Houston, Jimmy V says he’ll allow his players 24 hours to feel sorry for themselves and curse the basketball gods. Then, he says, he’ll tell them to pick up their butts and get back in the mainstream.”
