the Sports ON Tap

In 2003, the most hated team in the NBA did the kindest thing anyone has ever done on a basketball court. April 25, 2003. Rose Garden, Portland. Game 3 of the first round against Dallas. The Blazers are down 2-0 and facing elimination from the moment they wake up. That Blazers team had a nickname. The Jail Blazers. They were, at the time, maybe the least likable team in professional sports. Arrests. Suspensions. A roster full of guys the national media treated as villains. Portland fans were exhausted by them. Before the game, a 13 year old girl named Natalie Gilbert walks to center court to sing the national anthem in front of 19,980 people. What nobody in the building knew is that she was sick. She had the flu. She later said she just didn't feel like herself at all that day. She gets a few lines in. And then her brain goes blank. She sings "star's last gleaming" instead of "twilight's last gleaming," realizes it instantly, and stops. She looks around. She puts her hand to her face. Thirteen years old. Twenty thousand people. National television. Frozen. There is no worse feeling available to a human being. And then a man walks out of the Portland huddle. Maurice Cheeks, the head coach, minutes away from a playoff elimination game, leaves his team, walks across the floor, puts his arm around her shoulder and says, "C'mon." Then he starts singing with her. Now understand something. Maurice Cheeks cannot sing. At all. He is not remotely trying to rescue the performance. He's just refusing to let a kid stand there alone. He keeps his arm around her the whole way. He feeds her the next words. And within a few seconds, all 19,980 people in that building stand up and sing it with them. A moment that was going to define a little girl's life in the worst possible way became the exact opposite. Dan Patrick wrote at the time that Cheeks' simple actions had become the defining moment of the entire playoffs. They went on Jay Leno together. CNN. Good Morning America. It became one of the first truly viral NBA moments, years before that word meant anything. Portland lost the game. They lost the series. Cheeks finished his Blazers tenure with a fairly ordinary record and was eventually let go. Now here's the ending. In March 2025, almost 22 years later, Maurice Cheeks came back to Portland as an assistant coach with the New York Knicks. The Blazers found Natalie Gilbert. She's 35 now. Married. Goes by Natalie Zito. She's also, as it turns out, a Blazers season ticket holder. They brought her back to sing the anthem again. She nailed it. The whole building erupted. And the camera cut to Cheeks on the sideline, beaming like a proud father. The two of them met before the game and hugged. What she said afterward is why this story matters. She explained that she'd been made fun of a lot as a kid, and that in the moment she felt most helpless and hopeless, a stranger walked right over with no hesitation. "This moment changed my life." And then she said something even better. That she wouldn't go back and change any of it. That seeing him again and finding out he's still the same standup guy proved it was all real. Twenty two years. One arm around a shoulder. Follow the Sports ON Tap, we post a story like this every day.