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After defeating prostate cancer earlier this year, Alonzo Mourning is looking to help other men overcome the disease.
In an ESPN interview published on Monday, the 54-year-old NBA Hall of Fame center revealed that he underwent surgery in mid-March following a Stage 3 cancer diagnosis – and that he’s now cancer-free after further testing showed the cancer didn’t spread.
On Tuesday, Mourning held a press conference at Kaseya Center to address the news.
“Today, right now, I’m cancer-free, by the grace of God,” Mourning told reporters. “Now my focus – and I sat down with the people I confide in, my agent, my business adviser – I sat down with them, and I told them, ‘Hey, I want to turn this adversity into something that will be positive for humanity.'”
He added: “This isn’t about me. This is much bigger than me. It truly is.”
According to the American Cancer Society, prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men in the United States aside from skin cancer. One in eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetime, and about one in every 44 men in the U.S. will die from the cancer.
Mourning described how being proactive and getting routine screenings helped him catch the disease, which he referred to as a “silent killer,” before it was too late. He says he was diagnosed in February following a biopsy that stemmed from troublesome MRI results. Standard treatment, which Mourning underwent, involves surgical removal of the prostate gland.
“If I wasn’t proactive, then I would have found out years later, and it would have been too late,” Mourning said.
He said his doctor explained to him that there are “so many men out there that have cancer and don’t even know it.”
“I thought long and hard about that,” Mourning recalled. “I said, ‘Doc, how do we help those guys who don’t know?’ He said, ‘Man, we got to get the word out. We got to encourage these guys to go and get regular checkups.'”
The American Cancer Society recommends that beginning at age 50, men should talk to their doctor about prostate screening by testing for prostate-specific antigen. Patients at higher risk, including African American men and those with a close relative diagnosed with prostate cancer, should start the screening discussion even sooner, the group says.
Mourning, who retired from the NBA in 2003 due to complications from kidney disease, spent the majority of his 15-year basketball career with the Miami Heat. He also played for the Charlotte Hornets and New Jersey Nets.
He was later inducted into the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and the FIBA Hall of Fame.
