It's a heart-warming story more than a decade old now, so you might not have heard about what happened at the Rose Garden, home of the Portland Trail Blazers, the night of April 23, 2003. Even if you have, it's a story worth telling over and over again.
New Detroit Pistons coach Maurice Cheeks -- back then coach of the Blazers -- came to the rescue of a 13-year-old girl who was stumbling through the National Anthem before a pivotal Blazers-Dallas Mavericks playoff game.
The girl, Natalie Gilbert, had won a contest to sing the anthem but came down with the flu on the night of her performance and struggled with the words from the onset. Sick and staggered, she just quit singing.
“I was turning around looking for anybody to help me,” Gilbert told a newsok.com reporter for a story in 2009. “No one did anything.”
Cheeks, feeling her humiliation, walked over to Gilbert, put his arm around her and urged her to continue.
She did ... with a big assist from Cheeks and the sellout crowd.
Watch the above video to see Cheeks recount the story to FOX Sports Detroit's Mickey York.
