Not without a fight
TNT’s Sager hangs tough in cancer battle
HOUSTON — Craig Sager’s once lustrous chestnut hair is down to a few unruly strands because of chemotherapy, and on this day of hope a simple green T-shirt and blue shorts adorn the broadcaster known by millions for his ostentatious wardrobe and easy rapport with the NBA’s elite.
He methodi ca l l y extended a long, skinny arm to an IV pole holding the stem cells he is counting on to save his life. He cradled the tube, watching the crimson liquid drip in a perfect cadence into the cannula that feeds it into his cancer-stricken body.
TNT’s beloved broadcaster received a rare t hird bone marrow transplant Wednesday to fight an aggressive form of leukemia. The 65-year-old Sager has battled acute myeloid leukemia since 2014 and announced in March he no longer was in remission.
Sager knows the odds are against him. Yet, he seems unfazed.
“I like to gamble,” he told the Associated Press. “I like to bet on horses, I like to bet on dogs, I like to bet on a lot of things. I’ve bet on a lot of things with a lot higher odds than this.”
Sager twice before has received a bone marrow transplant with stem cells, and each time he went into remission for several months. His son, Craig Sager II, was the donor then. This time, an anonymous 20-year-old donor was considered a perfect match.
Sager has been hospitalized for a month and has another monthlong stay ahead. He hasn’t thought a lot about the man whose bone marrow could change everything for him. But when he learned of his age, he expressed a half-serious concern.
“My only thing was I was afraid that when he signed up to be the donor, he may have been in some drunk fraternity house trying to impress his date,” said Sager, with a smile. “And they call him up the next day and say: ‘ Want to come down to the hospital?’ and he’s like: ‘What?’”
His fears turned out to be unfounded.
“He came through,” Sager said.
The latest of nearly 100 procedures Sager has endured in his wellpublicized fight was performed at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and took more than 10 hours to complete. Dr. Muzaffar Qazilbash, Sager’s stem cell transplantation physician, researched thousands of such transplants at MD Anderson over the past 15 years.
“It’s less than 1 percent of the total number of transplants,” Qazilbash said. “It’s very rare to have three transplants.”
Sager, who has worked for TNT for more than three decades, says he is open to trying anything doctors think might help.
“I’ve had every chemo in the alphabet, most of them more than once,” he said. Despite the rigors of treatment and how they can ravage his body, he never has thought about giving up. He gets angry when he meets other patients who say they’ve grown weary of fighting.
“Man, life is too beautiful, too wonderful, there’s just too many things,” he said. “It’s not just you. It’s your family and kids and all. Fight. Fight until the end. Fight as hard as you can.”