NBA Legend Alonzo Mourning Issues Medical Plea to All Men
Alonzo Mourning is Miami Heat royalty, having spent the majority of his 15-year Hall of Fame career with the franchise. Since 2009, Mourning, who won an NBA championship with the Heat in 2006, has served as the organization's vice president of player programs and development.
On Sunday, prior to Miami's 134-91 blowout win over the Chicago Bulls, Mourning and fellow Heat legend Glen Rice had the chance to give back to the fanbase as part of AT&T's Dunk Bus debut. The initiative gives fans a chance to meet NBA legends, compete for prizes and more, and will also be popping up in Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, and Oklahoma City in the coming months.
“The activation with the dunk bus has allowed people to be interactive, shoot some hoops and, you know, just bring them closer to the game,” Mourning told Men's Journal Sunday. “Any chance I get to interact with the fans, I take full advantage of it because we would not be without Heat Nation, without the people that lift us up. They play a big role in our success as an organization.”
Known for his imposing presence in the paint as one of the league's top centers during his playing days, Mourning remains active in the public eye in retirement, pouring his energy into a variety of causes near and dear to his heart.
Mourning a man of the people
Over the weekend, Mourning hosted his 26th annual celebrity golf classic to benefit the Overtown Youth Center and Honey Shine Miami. Recently, Mourning has also been involved in the Black Health Matters Summit and securing affordable housing for senior citizens, among other causes.
“I have in-school, after-school summer programming. I have charter school. I have exposure to the arts. I have mentoring. I'm developing affordable housing. It's just so much that I'm trying to do," Mourning explained. "I partnered up with Baptist Health System to get the word out about men being proactive with their health and going to the doctor. It's just so many different things you know that had an impact on my life that I felt that I could use as a platform to connect and help the community."
As a teenager, Mourning spent seven years in the foster home of Fannie R. Threet, which further impacted his desire to give back.
"I just basically use my own experiences growing up in foster care and the impact that my foster mom had on my life and allowed me to be the number one high school player in the country and going on to play basketball and travel in the world," he said. "As a kid, I had the ability and my foster mom just gave me the support, the love, and the resources. I know that there's a lot of kids out here that have the ability. They just don't have the resources in the inner city. So I try to provide that and give them an opportunity.”
Health is wealth
Mourning has been outspoken about his own health issues over the years, which include his battle with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS), a rare and serious kidney disease that interrupted his NBA career.
In 2024, Mourning revealed that he had his prostate removed following a diagnosis of Stage 3 prostate cancer. Now, he preaches to other men about the dangers of these "silent, asymptomatic killers."
“You never really know exactly that you have something going on unless you go to the doctor and get a checkup," he said. "And me, man, I live at the doctor. I'm at the doctor all the time, getting stuff checked out, because I want to identify something before it gets worse. And unfortunately, guys, as men, we're told to suck it up, be a man, and ignore it, and you'll be okay. When there could be some underlying reasons why you're dealing with what you're dealing with. So I encourage men to go to the doctor. Don't ignore signs and symptoms and get things checked out and be proactive with their health.
"I also let men know that, hey, there's people that rely on your existence on this earth. So it's important that you take care of yourself for those loved ones, the people that love you and need you here. So when you talk about Hypertension, you talk about diabetes, you talk about prostate cancer, you talk about kidney disease. All of those are silent killers. You can be walking around with clogged arteries in your veins and in your heart and you don't even know it. So it's important for you to go to the doctor and just kind of be proactive with your health.”
All-Star Weekend not what it used to be
Mourning played in seven NBA All-Star Games and has watched in recent years as the league has tinkered with the format in an effort to entice more competitive play during the annual exhibition.
Asked if he had any ideas how to get players to take the showcase more seriously, Mourning couldn't come up with an answer but he did have plenty to say.
"You can't motivate them with money, because guys have already made so much money already," he said. "I don't know how else you do it. I mean, we had a different mentality back then. We had a different, more competitive mentality than these young guys do. And it's unfortunate that they lost that.
"It's all about branding. Now, guys, it's not even a badge of honor anymore now to play 82 games. Now, if you just play 65, it's okay. MJ [Michael Jordan] didn't go about his career that way. Magic [Johnson] didn't go about his career that way. [Larry] Bird didn't go about his career that way. These are the greats, the guys that paved the way for all of us. They played basketball for the love of the game. They were hoopers. They just wanted to play ball. That's all it was about. It was about playing ball.
"I really couldn't tell you what would be the formula to encourage guys to want to play hard in an All-Star game. I couldn't tell you. Let me tell you what, if I had to answer to it, I would share it with the commissioner."
Centers of attention
Mourning was consistently one of the better centers in the NBA, matching brains and brawn in the post against the likes of Shaquille O'Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, Patrick Ewing and others.
He still keeps a keen eye on the league's modern big men, finding similarities between them and his peers even as the game has changed.
"If I look at the Joker [Nikola Jokic], I look at Rudy Gobert. I'm trying to figure out how me playing against Rudy Gobert would have been like me playing against Dikembe [Mutombo]," Mourning said. "Then I look at Joel Embiid. He's another one. Joel Embiid has a lot of Hakeem in him. Hakeem played similar to Joel Embiid. And then the Joker is in a whole other category by himself. He's a handful. He really is. Some of the stuff that he's able to do out there, it's a mixture of an Hakeem or David Robinson. It's just a mixture of all these different players. He's a mixture of Dirk Nowitzki, he shoots threes. He has the footwork inside, left-hand, right-hand hooks inside. He has a little bit of Tim Duncan in him. He's got a little bit of everything in him. I think he's the best player on the planet. I really do."