Basketball - Arizona Coach Denies He Has Parkinson S 

Arizona’s coach Lute Olson has denied rumors of having Parkinson’s disease. He described the rumors as vicious and completely false. Olson is 72 years old and in a weekly news conference he broached the topic.

Olson said that he had received telephone calls about the rumors that are circulating and that certain radio stations were talking about him having Parkinson’s disease. He said that it was an utter lie and he had regular physical examinations and nothing had turned up in them to give him a cause to believe that he had Parkinson’s disease.

Olson has been a college coach for 34 years and has a record of 779-278. He is member of the basketball Hall of Fame and has been coaching Arizona for 24 years with a record of 587-186.

He said that he had first heard about the Parkinson’s disease rumors a couple of weeks ago and there is no truth in the rumors. He said that if radio stations repeatedly spoke about it, he would take the necessary steps required to stop the stations from doing so. If required, he further added, he would get a statement from his physician to prove that the rumors were false.

The rumors started after certain people noticed Olson’s hands shake. Olson countered this by saying that people’s hands shook when they were nervous and at his age it was unavoidable.

He is worried that the rumors will have an impact on the already heated competition for recruiting high school talent. He felt that rumors like this were started by competing teams to have a negative impact on Arizona’s recruiting.