It says much about legendary sports reporter Craig Sager, who passed away yesterday at 65 after a long battle with leukemia, that an anecdote about talking an NBA All-Star out of suicide was relayed as a mere aside in a long Sports Illustrated profile written on him back in April. Sager, who covered everything from Hank Aaron’s 715th home run to the NBA Finals, led a long and (quite literally) colorful life, much spent on camera. He made an even bigger impact off of it.
It’s become a cliché to call people “larger than life,” but Sager really was. His eye-scorching outfits drew the eye, but Sager would have been the center of attention even in drab blues and grays. He was a positive force long before being diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in 2014, and everyone who came into contact with him, from newspaper interns to NBA superstars, couldn’t help but take a little of the positivity Sager projected with them.
Back in 1993, Detroit Pistons forward Dennis Rodman was suffering. He had recently gotten divorced from his first wife Annie Bakes, his Bad Boy Pistons—once back-to-back champs—were wallowing around .500, and his beloved coach Chuck Daly was gone. In a story related in his 1996 autobiography, Bad As I Want To Be, he headed to the Palace at Auburn Hills late one night, loaded gun in his truck, note left with a friend, to work out a life-or-death decision. He fell asleep in the parking lot, police arrived, and that was that. Later on Rodman met up with Daly, and was eventually traded to the San Antonio Spurs. He’d go on to win three more titles with the Chicago Bulls.
everyone who came into contact with SAGER, from newspaper interns to NBA superstars, couldn’t help but take a little of the positivity HE projected with them.
It’s not entirely clear where Sager’s story fits in, although it seems to have taken place earlier on the night in question (which Rodman doesn’t even remember properly in his telling—he says April, but it was in February). But other specifics are there. From Lee Jenkins’s SI story:
Dennis Rodman, who 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.”
The Landing Strip, which opened in Detroit in 1978, is still there. And Rodman, now 55, still spoke to Sager regularly. He’s never forgotten what Sager did for him, what he told him. Yesterday, as many others in the NBA family offered their condolences, Rodman offered thanks for that night 23 years ago:
