Jim Valvano’s ESPYs speech touched hearts. It’s also a masterclass in public speaking

Editor’s Note: This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering leadership, personal development and success through the lens of sports. Follow Peak here.

One day earlier this summer, Allison Shapira pulled up a video she’d never seen before and hit play.

On the screen was Jim Valvano, the legendary basketball coach from North Carolina State, affectionately known as Jimmy V, standing on stage at the 1993 ESPY Awards. Valvano was there to accept the inaugural Arthur Ashe Courage Award and announce the creation of the V Foundation for Cancer Research. He wore a black tux and a big smile and delivered one of the most powerful speeches in sports history.

Eight weeks later, he died of cancer at 47.

For 10 minutes, Shapira, an adjunct lecturer at Harvard and the CEO of Global Public Speaking, watched the speech for the first time. She cried and called her dad.

“Have you ever seen this?” she asked him. “Oh my God.”

For anyone who has watched the speech, it was a familiar reaction. And yet Shapira, who has watched hundreds of speeches, had never seen it. Neither had Steven D. Cohen, a professor at Johns Hopkins whose research examines the communication behaviors of effective leaders.

It underscored a surprising contradiction about Valvano’s speech: Among sports fans, it remains a sacred text, an inspirational call to action that has helped grant nearly $400 million for cancer research. But outside of sports, its magic often remains overlooked.

More than three decades later, the message remains indelible, an emotional tour de force on life, death and hope, a master class in the art of speech. Shapira was so impressed, she added it to her class list. So did Cohen.

“There is beauty in this speech just looking at it,” Cohen said. “Jimmy V’s speech is one of beauty — it lasts, it hits the heartstrings. But why? If we can peel back that onion and understand the why, then hopefully when we have a dream, when we have a goal that we’re trying to achieve — when there’s something that we care about and we want to create change out there in the world — we’ll feel empowered to do something similar.”

The night before the speech, Valvano wasn’t sure he could do it. At home in North Carolina, he was throwing up and could barely walk. He flew to New York City the next morning with Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski. On the way to the ceremony, an ESPN executive had to carry him into a cab.

But something changed when he stepped to the microphone. He told the audience he didn’t have cue cards or a teleprompter, and he was going to speak longer than anyone else.

“That’s the way it goes,” he said. “Time is very precious to me. I don’t know how much I have left, and I have some things that I would like to say.”

He began by introducing himself as an “emotional and passionate man,” the son of Rocco and Angelina Valvano, a family from Queens, N.Y., that couldn’t help it.

“We hug, we kiss, we love,” he said.

It didn’t matter that he had cancer. He still held a belief about how to live a full life, and it was here, 90 seconds into his speech, that he shared it.

“To me, there are three things we all should do every day; we should do this every day of our lives,” he said. “Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. Number three is you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day.”

Valvano’s speech, Shapira said, featured multiple components of an effective address, many of which spilled out in just the first two minutes. It had what Shapira calls “strategic authenticity” — the sweet spot between what feels real for the speaker and what feels right for the moment.

“When I work with people, I define authenticity as speaking and acting in a way that’s aligned to your values,” she said.

For Valvano, that happened when he told the crowd he was going to speak without a teleprompter and as long as he wanted.

“This speech so demonstrated the power of authenticity over perfection,” Shapira said. “He was even very clear: ‘Listen, I’m not using a teleprompter. I’m going to be the longest speaker here. I am who I am. This is me.’ ”

The speech contained universal truths, personally applied. “He shared a phrase in the beginning: ‘Time is so precious,’” Shapira said. “That is a universal truth that every single person can relate to. Then he said, ‘And I don’t know how much time I have left.’ That was personally applied. Sometimes people are afraid to share too much of themselves, but as long as it’s tapping into a universal truth, that’s what makes you more relatable and more human.”

It also utilized the rule of three — laugh, think, cry — a classic literary device which offers rhythmic musicality and serves as an easy memory device for listeners.

“There’s a magic that is created by a powerful speech,” Shapira said.

And Valvano was just getting started.

Jimmy V was a natural storyteller, a loud, gregarious college basketball coach of an old tradition. Armed with an infectious smile and a fast-talking charm, he coached at Bucknell and Iona in the 1970s before taking over at North Carolina State in 1980.

Three years later, he led perhaps the most remarkable underdog run in the history of the NCAA Tournament, guiding the sixth-seeded Wolfpack to a national championship in 1983. When Lorenzo Charles plucked an air ball from the sky and slammed home a game-winning dunk, Valvano ran around the court in a daze, looking for someone to hug.

Valvano was the kind of guy who quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Nothing great could be accomplished without enthusiasm.” But he wasn’t above poking fun at himself.

Two-and-a-half minutes in, he told a story about the first speech he ever gave, when he was the coach of the freshman team at Rutgers in the late 1960s. Inspired by “Commitment to Excellence,” a book by Packers coach Vince Lombardi, Valvano became enamored with one of the legendary leader’s locker room gambits.

“I’m reading this in this book,” Valvano told the audience. “I’m getting this picture of Lombardi before his first game, and he said, ‘Gentlemen, we will be successful this year if you can focus on three things and three things only: Your family, your religion and the Green Bay Packers.’ They knocked the walls down, and the rest was history.”

That’s beautiful, Valvano thought. Your family, your religion and Rutgers basketball. That’s it.

Valvano thought about that first speech for hours. He was 21; his players were just a couple of years younger. He waited until the last possible moment before bolting into the locker room and, boom, hit the door with force. It didn’t open.

Finally, he appeared in front of his players, pacing the room. This was his big moment.

“Gentlemen, we’ll be successful this year if you can focus on three things and three things only,” he told them. “Your family, your religion and the Green Bay Packers.”

“I remember that,” Valvano added, rubbing his face with his hand. “I remember where I came from.”

The moment produced uproarious laughter. But the anecdote provided something deeper. Cohen, the professor at Johns Hopkins, once wrote a paper examining the anecdote-creation process. It posited that the ideal anecdote includes four things: the setting, the characters, the plot and the moral. In a minute, Valvano perfectly established the setting and characters and delivered a perfectly-timed punch line.

The story also had a moral underneath: He would never forget where he came from.

“It’s so important to know where you are,” Valvano went on. “I know where I am right now. How do you go from where you are to where you want to be? I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal. You have to be willing to work for it.”

The way Shapira sees it, every powerful speech contains a little magic. But it’s not something you can map out.

“A speech is not a collection of check-the-boxes,” Shapira said. “There’s a spark.”

Six minutes in, Valvano dropped another iconic moment. This one wasn’t planned.

“That screen is flashing up there: ‘30 seconds,’ ” Valvano said, looking at a screen/monitor in front of him with an amused expression on his face. “Like I care about that screen right now, huh? I got tumors all over my body! I’m worried about some guy in the back going, ‘30 seconds?’ You got a lot — hey, va fa Napoli, buddy.”

It was an unscripted riff and hit on one of Shapira’s favorite (and most underutilized) techniques: the element of contrast.

“That contrast of 30 seconds left versus how much time does he have left in his body was powerful, striking, poignant in a way that brought me to tears,” Shapira said. “And that power of contrast is actually something that I actively work on with leaders. He just put it in off the cuff!”

It segued perfectly into the speech’s last section. Valvano encouraged the audience to enjoy the precious moments, to laugh, to think and to cry. However, he knew exactly what he wanted to do with the precious time he had left. More than 500,000 people would die of cancer in 1993, he said. One in four would be afflicted with the disease.

“I want to bring it back on the front table,” he said. “We need your help. I need your help. We need money for research. It may not save my life. It may save my children’s lives. It may save someone you love. And it’s very important.”

With the help of ESPN, he was establishing the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research.

It had a simple, powerful motto: Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.

In just a couple of minutes, Valvano brought attention to an issue (cancer), created a need (more research), identified a solution (to raise money through the foundation) and issued a call to action (“We need your help. I need your help”). To Cohen, it was a classic example of how to persuade others effectively — and one that anyone can be inspired by.

Cohen has taught speech for years. When his students tell him they can’t deliver a performance like the great speakers he shows in class, Cohen tells them they can. It’s the reason he teaches. “You’re not born a great speaker,” he tells them.

“He left us a 10-minute poem,” Cohen said. “It really is poetry. It is a beautiful example of what speaking from the heart and speaking with authenticity can do out in the world.”

As Valvano concluded his speech, he looked out toward the audience a final time. He had one more thing to say.

“Cancer can take away all 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. I thank you, and God bless you all.”

Then he was helped off the stage to a standing ovation.

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Focus on Sport / Getty Images)