Craig Sager is known as perhaps the best sideline reporter for NBA games, but he's also had a huge impact off of the court.

While Sager's name has been in headlines recently due to his ongoing battle with leukemia, there's an interesting story to be heard involving the NBA on TNT reporter and former basketball great, Dennis Rodman.

In an article by Lee Jenkins of Sports Illustrated, Jenkins talks about how Sager once talked Rodman out of committing suicide:

“An interview with Sager should really be conducted at the dog track, where he used to own greyhounds, or a Hooters, where servers clad in Sager Orange bring him Bud Light and buffalo shrimp. He should be perched on a barstool next to his wife, Stacy — a former Bulls dancer 21 years his junior — regaling strangers with a story about 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.’”

Tannen Maury / Europoean Pressphoto Agency
Tannen Maury / Europoean Pressphoto Agency

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The rebounding wizard would go on to win three more NBA championships after 1993 when he joined the Chicago Bulls for their last three-peat from 1996-98. While Rodman is quite the character, suicide is an extremely serious subject.

Sager will always be known for the colorful suits that he wears and his work as a reporter for the past 17 years, but his most important contribution over the years may have been saving the life of another.