Anniversary Celebration a Sad Affair : College basketball: Valvano, gravely ill with cancer, will be feted today at North Carolina State.

Jim Valvano will be honored at North Carolina State today, brought back to Reynolds Coliseum for a celebration of the 10-year anniversary of the basketball team that wrought the miracle that made him rich and famous.

It is not likely to be a joyous occasion. Jim Valvano is gravely ill, fighting a cancer that seems to eat away at his body almost every day. Recently, he has been too weak to carry out the assignments for ABC and ESPN that he says have been his salvation in these desperate times.

He is supposed to work today’s N.C. State-Duke game for ABC, but there is little doubt that it will be difficult for him to do that. In fact, if Valvano can walk to midcourt to accept the cheers in the building he once ruled, it will be an act of sheer courage and will.

There is nothing sadder in life than premature death. Two months ago, in a story that made you cry, Valvano, 46, talked openly to Sports Illustrated’s Gary Smith about the fear he carries with him everywhere he goes, the nightmares that wake him in the middle of the night, the overwhelming despair he has to constantly fight.

Knowing all that, the easiest thing to write at this moment would be a paean to Valvano. Certainly, there are enough good things to say about him to more than fill this page. He was as good a big-game coach as I have ever seen, not only in 1983 when he took the Wolfpack to an improbable national championship, but throughout his career.

He is as genuinely funny as anyone I have ever met, so clever and sharp-witted that he would inevitably leave you aching with laughter. He is charming, an entertainer, the bright light in any room he walks into.

(Valvano to referee Hank Nichols one night during a game against North Carolina: “Hey, Hank, can you give me a technical for what I’m thinking?” Nichols: “Of course not, Jimmy.” Valvano: “Well, in that case, I think you really stink.”)

What was often missed in all the laughter and all the talk about attack-rats and cutting down nets was the brilliance of the man. Valvano isn’t merely bright, he is brilliant. I honestly cannot think of anyone I have encountered in my life who is smarter than Valvano. His memory is prodigious; his ability to conceive ideas incomparable. He is an incredibly fast learner, someone able to deal with a dozen mental problems at once without stumbling.

I remember sitting in his office late one night while he explained perestroika and why it would inevitably mean the end of the Soviet Union. “Three years max,” he said, “And they’re outta there.” This was in November 1988.

Perhaps because I have so much respect for his mind, I have been too harsh in my judgments of Valvano. I never could accept his rationalizations about what went wrong at N.C. State because I knew--just knew --he was too smart to let the program run amok unless he simply wasn’t paying attention.

And I knew he wasn’t paying attention because we had talked often about his restlessness. In a sense, Valvano was cursed by his accomplishments and his ability to understand the vagaries of life. He woke up one morning having accomplished his life’s dream and then realized he was still only 36. Like the song says, “Is that all there is?”

So, he searched. He thought about television--not as an analyst, but as a standup host a la Letterman. He liked the idea of writing; not the kind of trashy autobiography he produced as an apologia for his final years at N.C. State, but something serious. He even had a title: “Lessons I Learned From My Father.”

For a while he wanted to be (and was) an athletic director. He considered coaching at UCLA, taking on the challenge of the Wooden legacy that won’t go away.

He wanted to be an entrepreneur: sit around and think up creative ways to make money; not easy ways (he had already found those) but different ways. He sold art. He wrote a cookbook. He gave motivational talks to businesses for more money than he had ever thought existed. It seemed that he could do almost anything.

Except figure out what he wanted to do. Often, after games in Reynolds Coliseum, Valvano and his coaches would retire to the basketball office, not to look at tape the way so many staffs do, but to eat pizza, drink beer and unwind.

Valvano could never go home and sleep after a game, so he sat with the coaches and any friends who might drop by, and swapped stories. During those sessions, he questioned everything in his life--except his family--and doubted himself constantly. The smartest people always do that.

Very late one night, he and I were alone in the office. After the pizza had been eaten, the beer and wine polished off, Valvano turned serious.

He started talking about John Wooden and Dean Smith and how much he respected what they had done. In those days, when it was still all good at N.C. State, he never worried about Smith’s long shadow the way so many other ACC coaches did. Earlier in the evening, though, he had told his favorite Dean story:

“I don’t want to say he’s considered God around here, but when I first got the job here, I went to get a haircut. Barber says to me, ‘So you replaced old Norman Sloan at N.C. State?’ I told him I had. He says, ‘Well, I sure hope you have more luck beating Dean than old Norman did.’ I said, ‘Wait a minute, Norman won a national championship. In fact, he had a team that went undefeated one year.’ And the barber, without missing a beat says, ‘Yeah, but just think what Dean would have done with that team.’ ”

Now, though, the jokes had been put aside for the evening. “What Dean and Wooden have done is unbelievable,” he said. “Astounding. Mind-boggling. And I know--know--there’s no way I can be them. Absolutely no way. Am I a good enough coach to win year in and year out? Yes. I’m sure of that. Do I have the patience, the perseverance, the drive to do it? No. I’m just as sure.”

And then he looked me in the eye and said: “You know what my problem is? I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.”

Sadly, he has never quite figured that one out. He left the N.C. State program in tatters that his successor, Les Robinson, still hasn’t repaired. He recruited players who didn’t graduate and he still won’t concede that serious mistakes were made.

“I guess the mistake I made was in trusting my players too much,” he told Sports Illustrated. He knew better than that. He knew almost none of his players could be trusted to go to class.

Now, tragically, all the late-night ruminations about the future have little meaning. The future now is getting to tomorrow. And then one more tomorrow. I miss those late nights in the office. I miss listening to him wonder and dream.

But, as Jim Valvano would certainly tell you, life is never that easy or that simple. He is so smart, talented and funny. And yet, he is flawed and mortal like the rest of us. Three years ago, those flaws mattered because they affected people’s lives. Right now, they don’t matter one bit.

The bottom line is this: Valvano has brought a lot more joy to the world than anything else. This is a time to dream for him and to hope for him one more time. And pray that there’s one more miracle left for Jim Valvano.