Craig Sager saved former Detroit Pistons' star Dennis Rodman's life
While the NBA world mourns the loss of Craig Sager, a familiar face to Detroit Pistons fans has a deeper reason than most for the pain he feels at his passing.
It’s been a rough day in NBA circles and in the sports world at large. If you’ve watched a big nationally televised NBA game in the past few decades, you are no doubt familiar with Craig Sager.
The charismatic and colorful Sager was known not just for his entertaining sideline interviews, particularly legendary interviews with San Antonio Spurs’ coach Gregg Popovich, but since his diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia in 2014, he’s been emblematic of perseverance, grace and strength.
Sager’s son, Craig Jr., was deemed a match for a bone marrow transplant which pushed the cancer into remission, but in March of this year he announced that it had returned. Doctors gave him three-to-six months to live, but in true Craig Sager fashion, he made it nine. On Thursday, December 15th, he passed away at the age of 65.
On an hourly basis, NBA teams, coaches, players, fellow broadcasters, writers and fans alike have been releasing and tweeting statements of sorrow and condolences to the Sager family, but one man has a different reason for cherishing Sager’s memory than any other.
Naturally, it’s a man who has a different story than almost any other, even in the stratospheric world of his fellow NBA stars. This man is former Detroit Pistons‘ star and two-time champion Dennis Rodman, unique as it gets.
Dennis Rodman tweeted his own condolences, and his thanks:
Lee Jenkins of SI.com detailed the story of Craig Sager saving Dennis Rodman’s life in the second story of a Detroit strip club in an extensive interview earlier this year.
Dennis Rodman went AWOL from the Pistons in 1993 and planned to commit suicide, until Sager tracked down the Worm on the second floor of a Detroit strip club. “The Landing Strip,” Sager recalls. “He had the gun. He was going to do it. I told him how stupid that would be.”
Broadcasting legend. Confidante to the best coaches and players the NBA has ever seen. Respected by everybody to come in contact with him. Hero.
Just a few ways to describe him, and Dennis Rodman knows it better than most.
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