During last year's NBA Playoffs, a man who helmed the sidelines for 30 years quickly disappeared. Craig Sager, the man of many multi-colored suits, was diagnosed with leukemia and forced to enter treatment immediately.
Sager's absence was felt throughout the league, with players and coaches offering their support for him as he battled cancer. Seven months later, there's good news: Sager received a successful bone marrow transplant from his son, and the NBA broadcast legend figures to make a full recovery.
During the NBA's day-long slate of games, TNT took time out to air an 18-minute special on Sager's journey -- one Sager admits he was harder and longer than he expected.
Sager also shares how he first discovered something was wrong.
"As I was going back and forth to the locker rooms I just felt like, not myself, "Sager says. "I had a hard time getting back and forth, and I ran into Dr. Souryal from the Dallas Mavericks, who had operated on my knee in a skiing accident a few years earlier, and I said, 'Doc, I just don't feel good.' And he did some initial tests and said, 'You gotta go to the hospital. I'll drive you.'
"They took me to the emergency room to do the blood work, and they said that my hemoglobin was 4.6. According to their standards, that was 'walking dead.'"
But Sager fought hard, and appears well on his way to victory. his treatment process isn't over, but his wife already termed the ordeal "a miracle."
It's a long video, but well worth watching. You don't have to be a basketball fan to enjoy the story.
