Valvano Film Gives Fans An Extra Night
For those who can’t believe the college basketball season will be all over after tonight’s title tilt between Kentucky and Syracuse, CBS-TV understands.
On Tuesday, the network will recall one of the NCAA tournament’s all-time upsets, North Carolina State nipping Houston 54-52 in 1983, as part of the storybook life and death of the flamboyant winning coach.
“Never Give Up: The Jimmy V Story” dramatizes the fast-track life of Jim Valvano. He reached the pinnacle as a basketball coach at 36, when his Wolfpack won the title. But within a decade, he lost his job to scandal and his life to cancer.
An NCAA investigation found that some State players illegally sold their sneakers and complimentary tickets, but could not prove more serious allegations of cheating by point-shaving. Valvano resigned, accepting a school buyout for more than a half-million dollars.
The movie pulls its punches about the scandal, but doesn’t paint the coach as an untarnished hero.
Actor Anthony LaPaglia captures Valvano’s mannerisms. And he is as close to the coach’s physical appearance as, say, Anthony Hopkins is to Richard Nixon’s.
This first movie made for television by Sports Illustrated Television, in tandem with Warner Bros. Television, works best when it contrasts how Valvano’s extroverted personality constantly made it easy for strangers to consider him family, but often made him a stranger to his own family.
While it’s not “Nixon,” “it certainly isn’t ‘Ozzie and Harriet,’ ” says Pam Valvano, the coach’s widow.
She and daughters Nicole, Jamie and Lee Ann consulted at length with the filmmakers. And Pam provided some of the most poignant moments of how Valvano’s ambition alienated the family.
Her husband died three years ago. Before he did, he was able to bury the scandal with his display of courage in battling his cancer and inspiring others fighting the same disease. Even as he retooled his career to become a popular TV commentator, he created the V Foundation that has raised $2.5 million for cancer research.
Pam Valvano’s prime motivation in assisting the movie production was to benefit the foundation.
As successful as the film is in connecting Valvano’s life story with ongoing fund-raising for a worthy cause, and in depicting how his family becomes isolated and surrounded by media, the movie is flawed on two fronts.
It fails in trying to blend the TV cast into actual footage of the dramatic title game - including Dereck Whittenburg’s desperation final shot falling short, where Lorenzo Charles grabs the ball and rams it through the basket for victory.
And the movie opts to conclude with a Valvano speech at N.C. State rather than the one that moved so many viewers at a TV awards banquet. But perhaps, as Pam Valvano put it, “no one else on earth could have done that speech.”
The many who doubted N.C. State could beat Houston were wrong. The many who doubted Jim Valvano could beat cancer were right.
But there is a transcendent bond between the “defining moment” of his life and the moment of his death. Ultimately, it is indeed not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.
Cinderella ‘96?
How little chance anyone gave Syracuse was amply demonstrated on CBS-TV, even as the Orangemen neared victory Saturday.
Not only did broadcasters Jim Nantz and Billy Packer keep Mississippi State’s hopes alive rhetorically long after its sad average of a turnover every 2 minutes had defeated and demoralized its players, the narrators kept featuring human-interest angles on the blundering Bulldogs.
We heard about everything from Richard Williams’ solid coaching to forward Russell Walters turkey hunting. Apparently, nothing had been scripted for Syracuse.
Lingering faith in Mississippi State was in contrast to doubts about Massachusetts in the second game. With Kentucky up by 11 midway through the second half, Packer observed UMass “has time for one more good run, but do they have the energy?”
Massachusetts made a lot more runs, albeit falling short, than had Mississippi State.