Advertisement

ESPN's Bob Valvano, Jim Valvano's brother, announces he has cancer

Jason Owens
·Staff writer
·2 min read
Bob Valvano.
Bob Valvano announced that he has leukemia. (Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

ESPN's Bob Valvano announced on Monday that he's been diagnosed with leukemia.

The former college basketball coach announced that he also has a heart aneurysm and kidney damage, but that his doctor says his prognosis is good.

Brother of late NC State coach Jim Valvano

Valvano hosts a daily sports show on ESPN Radio's Louisville affiliate and works as a college basketball game analyst on ESPN Radio and ESPNU. He coached five different college basketball programs from 1982 through 1998. He is the brother of the late Jim Valvano.

Jim Valvano won a national championship as NC State's head basketball coach in 1983, but is perhaps best known for his legacy raising cancer awareness through The V Foundation. He died in 1993 at 47 years old following a bout with cancer. His "Don't ever give up" speech is replayed annually as a rallying cry for cancer awareness and fundraising by ESPN and The V Foundation.

Valvano stepped away radio show

Valvano, 64, announced on April 6 that he was taking time away from his radio show to address health issues. He has survived two heart attacks and was previously diagnosed with monoclonal B-cell lymphocytosis, a precursor to leukemia. He told Awful Announcing in February that he was optimistic that it would not advance to leukemia.

“That’s a condition that I’m going to have to keep an eye on and hope it doesn’t turn into leukemia," Valvano said in a Feb. 22 interview. "Everybody who has leukemia has this, but not everyone who gets this gets leukemia. So far, so good. But it was a little scary."

Valvano also announced on Monday that he's receiving treatment from Dr. Khuda Khan, a student of his brother's oncologist Dr. Joseph Moore.

More from Yahoo Sports: