Dick Vitale almost lost his voice, his life, but returns to college basketball: ‘The best medicine’
Beginning Tuesday with the inaugural Dick Vitale Invitational, college basketball’s most famous broadcaster begins what he hopes will be a regular rotation of calling games.
It’s a fortunate position that was hard to imagine not long ago — when Vitale was far, far away from anywhere you’ve ever seen him. Not crammed behind a courtside table at Cameron Indoor, or Rupp Arena or any of the other storied college basketball venues he’s brought to life through the television screen. No frothing fans swarming him, asking for autographs, giddy just to be in his orbit. No headset strapped across his shiny bald dome. No microphone in hand.
Just silence. That trademark voice — the one that made Vitale the storyteller for generations of college hoops — suddenly, shockingly, mute.
“That’s what made Dickie V who he is,” said Vitale’s wife of 54 years, Lorraine. “His whole career is based on his voice.”
Instead, Vitale found himself stuck in a hospital bed, all alone in some sterile square. Away from college basketball, again, mired in a battle against four kinds of cancer that’s been raging since 2021.
He was riddled with pain, fatigue, frustration and, frankly, the kind of negativity that his larger-than-life persona always kept at bay. But that was before Vitale, 86, got sick. Before melanoma, lymphoma and vocal cord and lymph node cancer ravaged his body — and at times, his spirit. Before six months of chemotherapy. Before all the scans, 60 radiation treatments and doctors’ numbers on speed dial.
By the summer of 2024, three years after his initial melanoma diagnosis, Vitale had agreed with his oncologist. He’d have whatever chemo was necessary, lie down for an hour or two in the hospital for monitoring, then head home to his longtime residence in Bradenton, Fla. After one particularly grueling round, doctors told Vitale they had to keep him overnight. “A bad — I mean, bad — day,” Vitale remembered. “Everything was just bugging me, bothering me big time.” Lorraine stayed as late as she could, but visiting hours eventually ended.
In his solitude, Vitale’s mind wandered. Bad thoughts. Dark thoughts.
I was just wondering if I’m going to see another day.
“I became just totally hysterical,” Vitale said, in a hoarse whisper. “Me in a bed, crying my eyes out.”
Vitale’s nurse heard his sobs and came running. To calm him down, she reminded him of what he used to tell Jim Valvano — the legendary NC State coach who was one of Vitale’s longtime friends — during Valvano’s own cancer battle: You’re going to beat this. Then she encouraged Vitale to check his phone, which had been lying facedown on his bedside table.
When he flipped over his cell, Vitale was shocked. Hundreds of messages, prayers and well wishes from the college basketball community and beyond. Jay Wright, John Calipari, Rick Barnes: all titans of the sport, all thinking of and encouraging Vitale from hundreds of miles away.
“It gave him such a boost,” Lorraine said. “He said, with all of this love behind me, I’m making it.”
Which is exactly what Vitale did. In February, after two years away from the broadcast booth, Vitale made his triumphant return to college basketball for then-No. 2 Duke at Clemson. When Vitale was introduced over the Littlejohn Coliseum speaker system, the entire arena rose to its feet in appreciation. And Vitale, never one to hide his emotions, burst out in tears once again — only this time, from joy.
“To be honest with you, I never thought I’d ever be back courtside,” Vitale said. “I told my oncologist that is the best medicine I could receive. It really is. I love the game. I love the people.”
For as memorable and long-awaited as Vitale’s return at Clemson was, it was only one game.
After a mid-October scan revealed Vitale is cancer-free, Dickie V will be courtside in Charlotte, N.C., for Texas and No. 6 Duke’s season-opening tilt at the event created in his honor — and, hopefully, many more games thereafter.
“A college basketball landscape without Dick Vitale in it, there’s definitely a void,” said Meg Aronowitz, ESPN senior vice president for production.
ESPN’s plan for Vitale, loosely, is to ease him back into regular action. Up through January 24th, the day of the college football national championship, the network plans to stagger Vitale’s appearances where they make the most sense. The ACC-SEC Challenge, for example, is right up Vitale’s alley, and one of the rare college hoops events that registers nationally before conference play. The same with the annual Jimmy V Classic, which allows Vitale to see amazing hoops — preseason top-five teams Florida and UConn square off this year — while simultaneously raising money and awareness for the V Foundation of Cancer Research.
And while Vitale is eager to go to as many games as his body will allow — even random one-offs at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports, down the road from him in Florida — the network doesn’t want him to overdo things.
Come mid-January, though, assuming Vitale’s health allows for it, fans should expect to see Dickie V on the sidelines much more regularly. Say, a game every other week, or depending on how he feels, maybe even weekly.
“Dick is passionate about a game a week, if he can do it,” Aronowitz added. “It’s on his terms, where if he’s ready to do a game, he’s gonna do a game. And if he doesn’t feel up to it energy-wise, health-wise, that’s his call — and there’s no explanations needed.”
My motivational tip of the day ! Simply say THANK YOU to all tbat have helped you in your life ! @jksports @ESPNPR @TheMontagGroup @WSB_Speakers @MKenealyEvents @TheVFoundation @KevinNegandhi @megaronowitz @AlexFarmartino pic.twitter.com/2WnNMHosqt
— Dick Vitale (@DickieV) November 3, 2025
To facilitate that, ESPN has made a few subtle logistical changes for Vitale.
One of the tougher ones, for Vitale at least: To preserve his voice, he now typically skips game-day shootarounds. As if Dickie V could be on the floor alongside players and coaches and not talk to them.
“I talk to everybody: this reporter, that reporter, the local TV,” Vitale said, “but the best way to avoid it is not being there.” Instead, Vitale usually calls coaches a few days before whichever game he’s commentating.
ESPN also keeps Vitale’s longtime producers in a rotation so that some are available wherever he winds up each week. (The network usually suggests three or so games a week it’s interested in him calling, and then Vitale makes his selection.) Likewise, security escorts Vitale more directly to his seat than it used to — although he, of course, still shakes hands and congregates with fans.
Just, less.
“He wants to talk to all the fans,” Aronowitz said, “but the more he talks, obviously the sooner he loses his voice.”
Which, ironically, has become Vitale’s biggest battle. These days, Vitale always leaves his house with three things to counter that.
The first? At least one specialty teabag: Traditional Medicinals’ organic “Throat Coat” blend. A few years ago, when Vitale and Lorraine were having brunch in Sarasota, a member of the English rock band The Moody Blues approached Vitale. He told Vitale that anytime he performs, he makes sure to drink this specialty tea first. Vitale tried it, thought it soothed his voice, and bought several boxes online. “He probably has three or four of those things a day,” Lorraine joked. And that’s not including the spare teabag he always keeps on him.
The second thing Vitale takes everywhere? Mucinex throat lozenges, a handful at a time, shoved into his coat or pants pocket for emergencies.
Both are integral to Vitale protecting his throat, which hasn’t been the same since his five vocal cord surgeries. After each procedure, doctors prohibited Vitale from talking for days or weeks on end — or, in the most dramatic case, for six months. Vitale had to resort to carrying around pads of paper or, more often, whiteboards.
“I did get used to reading his scribbly handwriting,” Lorraine joked. “It got worse (over time). He would want to get things out so fast that he would put the first two letters of the word, and the rest of it would just be a straight line — and I would have to guess what it meant.”
The Vitales can joke about it now, but Dickie V not being able to speak for so long took a toll on his mental health. “His whole personality is expressed in what he says verbally,” Lorraine said. “You can’t go on and on in paragraphs like you would if you were just talking, so it was very difficult.”
Nor could Vitale call his many friends in the basketball industry when in need of a pick-me-up. To simulate some of the human connection Vitale was missing, he and Lorraine committed to going out to dinner every night so he could be around other people, even if he couldn’t actually speak with them.
“You can’t just lay around and mope,” Vitale said, “because it’ll eat you up alive.”
The Naismith Memorial Hall of Famer also coped by leaning into his two loves: basketball and his family.
Vitale is a notorious social media fiend, scouring X for the latest transfer portal moves or buzzer-beating shots. (Of Kentucky, a Final Four favorite this season, reportedly spending over $20 million on its roster, Vitale said: “That blows me away.”) He would text regularly with coaches — Tennessee’s Barnes sent him a prayer every day — or fellow broadcasters, or even ESPN executives like president Jimmy Pitaro. “He’s embedded in the fabric of the game,” said broadcast partner Jay Bilas. “He took us all on the ride with him.”
And his family, too. During those bouts of silence, Vitale thought hard about the things he appreciated most. Forever things — like seeing all five of his grandkids graduate college. (Three are already out of Duke and Notre Dame, with two left.) “To do that, I’ve got to live to 90,” he said. “When you’re older, like I am, I have one goal in life.”
But that brings us back to the third thing Vitale doesn’t leave home without: flyers for his charity gala, which raises money for the Dick Vitale Pediatric Cancer Research Fund. Since its inception in 2005, the fund has raised over $105 million, and raising more is what Vitale calls his present-day “obsession.” That’s why, be it on airplanes, at restaurants or anywhere else, he distributes the flyers to anyone who will take them. In October, he and Lorraine went to Piesanos — a pizza place in Lakewood Ranch, Fla. — one night, and another customer recognized Vitale’s voice. After being handed a flyer, she promptly wrote a check for $10,000.
“That’s not the first or only time that’s happened,” Lorraine added. “You just never know.”
For the longest time, Vitale raised money for cancer because of Valvano, his close friend, and others he knew who’d suffered from the disease. Then he received his own diagnosis — and while it would’ve been justified for Vitale to retreat into himself, he’s done the opposite: using his platform to make a difference.
And the college basketball community gets Dickie V back on the sidelines at the same time?
To steal his own verbiage: That’s awesome, baby.
“I will never, ever stop fighting until I have no choice, but the bottom line is, I’ll keep battling,” Vitale said, that famous voice fading. “I will do whatever I can to try and stay around, because I feel there’s a lot of things I want to do — a lot of things I want to achieve.”
