Commentary : In Typical Fashion, Valvano Dodges a Bullet

If life is a race and the race is to the swift, you’ve got to keep running if you intend to win. You know how much little Jimmy Valvano likes to win.

And he’s swift, all right. Always was. And now that he’s dodged this latest bullet, as you somehow knew he would, he’s not slowing down one bit. Doesn’t want to. Maybe he can’t.

All we know is that a book that might have discredited him will not be released, his accusers have been disgraced and Jimmy V is still in the race.

How long will it be before we hear the book-jacket jokes and how little Jimmy never read any books anyway until he wrote his own? He’ll have you laughing. You can bet on that. Jimmy V, a multimillion-dollar cottage industry unto himself, walks through life trailed by a laugh track.

He can make you cry, too. I promise he can. Remember back in 1983, when Valvano’s North Carolina State basketball team, the little team that could, shocked the world by beating Houston and winning the NCAA title? Remember Jimmy looking for someone to hug? Remember the puppy-dog brown eyes a-brimming?

A year later, he showed me letters he had received from children, stricken with diseases that would break the hardest heart, thanking him for his inspiration, and the tears were welling up again. I wanted to cry, too, and I could have hugged him.

He has an exuberance that is contagious. How do you not like the guy?

He’s a charmer all right, Jimmy V. Charm your socks right off. And your running shoes, too.

You just try to catch him.

He’s got it all. Not only is he a very successful basketball coach, but he’s also a celebrity. He writes cookbooks. He has a couple of different radio shows. TV would grab him in a minute, if he had time to fit it in with all the motivational speeches he gives. Frank Sinatra is his buddy. Tom Lasorda is his buddy. He’s been to the White House. And he makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

But Jimmy V’s empire was threatened by a book, or at least a dust jacket that would have covered a book by Peter Golenbock called “Personal Fouls -- the Broken Promises and Shattered Dreams of Big Money Basketball at Jim Valvano’s North Carolina State.”

The book, or at least the would-be book jacket, suggested a program rife with drugs, cars, money, jewelry and grade-rigging.

Valvano denied all. The North Carolina attorney general warned the publisher, Simon & Schuster, to make certain the facts were straight. The publisher checked and decided the facts were crooked. We heard sources for the book had been paid. And when others stepped forward to corroborate some of what might have been in the book, they were shouted down.

The book has been withdrawn, and even if another publisher releases it, who’s going to believe any of it now?

So, Jimmy V has won, right?

It depends what you mean by winning, I guess.

While everyone was busy running to Valvano’s defense, a report on the North Carolina State basketball team and academics was presented to the school’s faculty senate. The news, in this case, is not nearly as encouraging.

Of the 43 players Valvano has recruited since 1980, 29 are either on some form of academic warning or were when they left the program.

Of the 12 currently on the team, 10 fall into that category.

Twenty-one of the 43 either transferred or withdrew before earning their degrees, and only two of those were in good academic standing and 13 had been suspended.

It is not a pretty picture. You don’t need to read a book to know that.

There have some other ugly scenes, if you’ll remember Chris Washburn, whom Valvano courted daily despite some problems with Washburn’s citizenship and a 470 score on his SAT. Despite Washburn’s several brushes with the law while at North Carolina State, including a conviction or two, Valvano was convinced that the best thing for Washburn was to keep him on the basketball floor, at least when he wasn’t in jail. Washburn was a horse Valvano rode until he fell.

What lesson was learned? It’s hard to detect any learning process when we see 10 of 12 players in poor academic standing.

But Jimmy V will survive that one, too. If the book is eventually released, he’s not going to sue. He can’t afford to (very few coaches can survive subpoenaed records), and he doesn’t need to. My guess is that Jimmy V will move on anyway -- to the pros, to the small screen. He’s a commodity, and he wants to stay that way.

Once, a few years ago, Valvano was retelling the magical mystery tour that somehow ended with the NCAA title.

“Everyone kept telling me, as you went along, you’d start to get tighter,” he said. “We kept playing and nothing happened. I’d ask people, ‘When do you stop laughing?’ ”

Maybe now, you do.