Sometimes, we don’t always realize what we have, or how it is effecting us. In Craig Sager, I knew that I was watching the someone at the pinnacle of their career. A true professional who embraced his career and everything that came along with it. I knew that I was watching a man with a blazer collection that Don Cherry would be jealous of. I knew I was watching someone who could withstand gruff coaches on the sidelines during games. I knew Sager was a family man, and I knew that he was good at his job. What I didn’t realize, until his passing on December 15th, is that I had been watching someone that had become a large part of my basketball life.
I have been watching NBA basketball for as long as I can imagine. My father took me to my first NBA game on December 5, 1992 at the Richfield Coliseum to see the Portland Trailblazers. Since that day, I knew that I loved the NBA, and I knew that it was going to be an enormous part of my life for a long as I lived. I soaked up as much as I could. Reading articles, box scores, and magazines. Watching “NBA Inside Stuff”, highlights on ESPN, the Cavaliers whenever I could, and especially enjoying the NBA on TNT broadcasts with my family. Basketball had consumed me, and I let it happen. I held certain players, coaches, and television personalities in high regard and at some point in my life each one of those was exactly what I wanted be when I grew up. As I got older, I started appreciate little things more. I started to understand the roles of coaches, players, and announcers within the context of their specific NBA dynamic. Once it became obvious that I was never going to be an NBA All-Star, or a legendary head coach, I focused on the guys calling the games, and the entire broadcast team. One thing was very obvious: Craig Sager was a gift.
The way that players and coaches embraced him as a friend was fascinating. He wasn’t a former player or coach. He wasn’t brash and outspoken. He was just simply Craig Sager, and everyone loved it. He built a rapport with these these NBA legends, and there was a mutual respect that always left me feeling good. Watching Kevin Garnett, Shaq, LeBron, Barkley, and other greats embrace this man the way that they did, and observing a genuine friendship with them gave me another reason to want to be involved in the NBA, in any way that I could. Craig Sager, simply put, made the NBA accessible in a way that nobody else did.
When I learned that he had gotten sick, I remember sitting in my apartment with my brother and saying, “Oh, no. Sam…Craig Sager…”. He stopped me there. He knew, he said, and we left it at that. We both sort of knew, at that point, that we weren’t going to have Craig to get us through quarter breaks, playoff games, and NBA All-Star Weekends for much longer. Every time he interviewed someone, every time you could hear his voice asking important questions at post game pressers, and every time he shared a laugh with Greg Popovich, I watched it with a genuine smile, and the understanding that it may be the last time.
When Craig Sager was “loaned” to ESPN so that he could cover an NBA Finals game, it was so fitting. It was one of the most memorable things I’ve experienced
The stories of his warmth, his generosity, his kindness, and his professionalism have been well chronicled. The casual fan can now, hopefully, understand that he was more than a guy in funny suits. More than a guy that put up with cranky coaches, and a good-natured ribbing from the guys in the studio.
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