MIAMI – Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame center Alonzo Mourning held a news conference at the Kaseya Center Tuesday, a day after he revealed to ESPN in an interview that he had undergone surgery to have his prostate removed after being diagnosed with Stage 3 prostate cancer.
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Mourning confirmed during Tuesday’s news conference that he was diagnosed on Feb. 23.
“It was terrifying news,” he said. “I was not expecting that simply because of how I felt.”
“I was deflated, Mourning added. “There was fear there, because when you start talking about cancer, immediately you think, ‘OK, so where is it? Is it all over my body?’”
Mourning said he felt “great” on Tuesday and was doing all he could to take care of his health, so he was shocked by the diagnosis.
He said despite being Stage 3, he was lucky that it was caught prior to spreading to his bloodstream or other organs.
“Knowing that I was feeling completely fine and knowing that I had this cancer inside my body — if I wasn’t again, proactive, I would have found out years later, and it would have been too late,” Mourning said.
I grew up in a household where it was taboo to talk about health-related issues,” he added. “It was never discussed. It was never talked about at the dinner table. It was never discussed at the family reunion.”
Mourning underwent surgery in March to remove his prostate and is now cancer free.
He is a 7-time All-Star, an NBA champion and an Olympic gold medalist.
He played most of his NBA career with the Miami Heat.
Mourning told reporters Tuesday he is grateful to be be able to use his platform to make a difference and is encouraging routine prostate cancer screening for men.
“Gives me the opportunity to reach as many men as possible about prostate cancer awareness,” he said.
Mourning encouraged men to have their prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels tested during their routine checkups, as it was during one of those routine checkups where his doctor discovered that his PSA levels were a bit high.
He said his doctor then recommended that he undergo an MRI, which led to a biopsy, which then led to his diagnosis.
According to Mourning, testing PSA levels is not always done during routine checkups, so it’s important that men specifically ask for that test.
Mourning said he is feeling well and takes care of his health by adhering to a primarily plant-based diet, exercising, including by doing yoga, and drinking lots of water.
Dr. Brian Pico, of the Memorial Cancer Institute, told Local 10 News that he believes men should be screened at 50 years old.