Hugh Tucker

[dank @cptdankkk]

@RooseBolton17

[the Sports ON Tap @thesportsontap]

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 @thesportsontap, we post a story like this every day.

[Time Capsule Tales @timecaptales]

As mentioned in this scene from the TV show 'The Office,’ Creed Bratton was actually the lead guitarist for the psychedelic folk-rock band The Grass Roots before becoming an actor.

He joined the group in the late 1960s during its run of chart success and helped cement the band's place in classic rock history with hits like Midnight Confessions, Temptation Eyes, and Let's Live for Today as seen in this live performance from 1967.

When The Office premiered in 2005, producers didn't ask him to play a fictional character, they asked him to play an exaggerated version of himself.

The result was Creed Bratton, the mysterious quality assurance employee whose bizarre one-liners and questionable past became some of the show's funniest running gags.

[Ś @lilsandray]

Paul Rudd and Jack black disagrees that sequels are never better that the original movies

Jack Black: there’s two famous sequels that are better than the original in my opinion

Paul Rudd: first one?

Jack Black: Empire Strikes Back

Paul Rudd: that’s better actually

[Mavo @0xMavo]

Emily Blunt described watching Tom Cruise’s patience completely unravel while filming Edge of Tomorrow.

Emily: “I could see Tom… the enthusiasm was starting to unravel a little bit, so I knew I had an end.”

Emily: “He was getting a bit frustrated with how long things were taking to shoot, yelling, ‘please roll!!.’”

“And I just looked at him and went, ‘this fucking sucks.’”

Emily: “He looked at me and went, ‘it’s a challenge.’”

[Ethan Hunt @EthanLiqHunt42]

@EverIntrigued Send in Sloptimus Prime

[Sammy @sammy_capital]

When one young Chicago trader first heard people were making $50,000 to $100,000 in a day

He told himself he would quit the moment he ever made that kind of money.

Then he had his first five-figure day.

He was back in the pit the next morning.

“After a while, the money becomes just a way of keeping score.”

By the late 1980s, a seat on the exchange could cost more than $300,000, and the trading floors were said to hold more millionaires per square inch than anywhere else on earth.

But the footage shows what that money did to people.

Traders carried live quote machines on dates, practiced screaming so they could be heard above the crowd, wore the same clothes after winning days, and came back even after they had already made enough to leave.

The technology looks ancient now.

The psychology does not.

This rare documentary captures the exact moment trading stops being about money and turns into identity, competition, and addiction to the game.

Bookmark it and watch as a lesson from the past

Especially now that markets are once again rewarding speed, hype, and risk-taking.

[cuh @DeadbeatCousin]

@ShamsCharania Terry Rozier watching the Feds Jump Beasley

[Faisal Hassan @Faazzla]

Whenever NFL players get arrested, I think of what Ray Lewis said during the 2011 NFL Lockout.

[cinesthetic. @TheCinesthetic]

The climax of MAN OF STEEL (2013) unfolds at the exact same time as the opening of BATMAN v SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (2016).

Watching the same event from Bruce Wayne’s perspective completely changes the way you experience it.

[BumperFilmsCoach2006💚🌈✊ @HarveyRivers17]

Love how this was set up in 2.

[Chase Snyder @ChasingSnyder]

Woody dragging a drunk Buzz Lightyear out of girls brunch to escape is so ahead of its time and might be Tim Allen’s best line reading(s) of his entire career

[Slime🐍 @ItsKingSlime]

Daphne Joy had Cam Newton ready to FOLD at the end of his podcast after she flipped the script on him and asked him whether SIZE matters for HIM, knowing he’s married 😳👀

“Size is not the end all, be all, is my honest answer… How about for you?”

“Woah…. Nah, Nah, Nah. I can’t.”

“Gotta keep it funky right??”

[Stephen Gibbons @Gibboanxious]

The "casting couch" scene from Toy Story 2 (1999) was quietly removed from the film's 4K Ultra HD restoration.

[MK, Ultra victim @MKaylaUltra]

This episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia aired in 2020 during peak woke

[Amiri King @AmiriKing]

Every animal has a warning label. Some are written in words. Some are written in missing fingers.

Not even sure if you can count to nine.

[𝕱𝖊𝖗𝖗𝖊𝖙 𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖊𝖓 @ferretallen]

Man FUCK those unwritten rules, THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT

[FanDuel @FanDuel]

@ShamsCharania "Are you focused on the Spurs or Magic?"

Sean Sweeney:

[Casual Sports Fan @bigsportscasual]

Look at LeBron face man 😭 Kobe had him SHOOK

[Cheeks @cheeksmeta]

@elonmusk 300 is next 🙄