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Posted on Tue, Apr. 29, 2003
Shining moment for Cheeks and 13-year-old girl made us proud
BY BILL LYON
Knight Ridder Newspapers

PHILADELPHIA -(KRT) – There she stood at center court, this little girl with the big, big voice, poised for the moment of a lifetime, the house lights dimmed, 20,000 people waiting expectantly for her, 20,000 people ready to hear her sing . . .

. . . and the words wouldn't come.

They lodged in her throat and couldn't be budged, no matter how mightily she strained. It was the song she knew by heart, the one she had heard a million times, the one she had sung over and over and over, the very one that she had rehearsed in a dressing room perfectly – every single run-through dead solid perfect – only minutes before, for heaven's sake. But now the words all tumbled over each other, crazy-quilted in a jumbling, confusing mish-mash:

“rocket's last gleaming … twilight's red glare … flag's not there … oh say can you see … yet wave . . .

She wanted to disappear, of course. She wanted the floor to open up and swallow her. Or a spaceship to beam her up and carry her off. Natalie Gilbert, a 13-year-old eighth grader, was living the nightmare each of us, in moments of morbid, fearful imagining, has conjured.

And then, suddenly, silent as a shadow, he was there, standing beside her, his left arm protectively, comfortingly around her, and he was whispering the forgotten words and she began to nod her head – “yes, yes, I remember now – and she began to mouth the words, and then he started to sing them, softly, and she joined in, hesitantly at first, but with a growing confidence, and soon they were a duet, and he was urging the crowd on with his right hand, and soon the duet had 20,000 back-ups, 20,000 people singing partly out of relief, partly out of compassion, partly out of pride, and rarely has the national anthem of the United States of America been rendered with such heartfelt gusto.

It was a glorious, redemptive moment.

Surely, you thought, sport has never been grander.

In fact, it says here that, for all the acrobatic, aeronautic, pyrotechnic, cruise-o-matic moments that the NBA playoffs have presented to us thus far this spring, all pale in comparison to the night of April 25, in the Rose Garden in Portland, Ore., shortly before the Trail Blazers met the Dallas Mavericks in the third game of their series.

That is when Maurice Cheeks, once the quintessential point guard, selfless and without ego and pretense, for many meritorious seasons a 76er, and most recently the coach of the Blazers, came to the rescue of Natalie Gilbert.

“I don't know why I did it,” he said. “It wasn't something I thought about. It's one of those things you just do.”

Except, of course, no one else thought to do it.

Everybody else did precisely what most of us would do in such a situation – study the ceiling, develop a sudden interest in our shoes, shift from side to side, paralyzed, frozen to the spot, embarrassed for the little girl, empathizing furiously, wishing desperately it would all end: “Please, let her remember the words. Please. Somebody do something.''

Maurice Cheeks, himself a father, did what all fathers, and grandfathers, too, in moments of heroic reverie, dream they would do. He tried to make the world go away.

Seeing as how his team was one loss away from elimination, he might have been expected to have other things on his mind than a junior high school girl who had won a contest to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” before tip-off of the most crucial game of the year.

And yet, there he was, not sure how exactly, walking to center court. And once there, this thought stabbed him:

“I wasn't sure whether I knew the words myself,” he said, laughing.

“I just didn't want her to be out there all alone.”

For those of us who chronicled Maurice Cheeks during his tenure in Philadelphia, what he did was totally in character. The man was never the self-absorbed prima donna so many have become. He played a spare, bare-bones, beautifully economical game, and wanted very much to disappear as soon as the game was over. He had no more a desire for the spotlight than he did for flamboyance on the court.

The best point guards are sharers and protectors and soothers. The best of them understand how to get the ball to the right people in the right place at the right time. The best of them watch out for everybody else.

Maurice Cheeks is still a point guard at heart.

The Trail Blazers haven't given Portland much to be proud of. It is a dysfunctional team, full of head cases and temperamental malcontents. But in one impromptu moment, Maurice Cheeks gave everyone a reason to be proud.

It has become a touchstone, this act of compassion. There isn't a TV network that hasn't played snippets of the coach coaching the little girl singing the anthem.

There is a reason so many want to show it, to write of it, to celebrate it. Because it resonates so, because it strums one of our most emotional chords, because it reminds us of the stirring capabilities of the human spirit.

“I guess,” Maurice Cheeks said, a bit uncomfortable at the thought, “it has become a moment.”

Oh, yes. Yes, it has.

One shining moment.

Of grace.

—

© 2003, The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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