In 2014, the Cincinnati Bengals cut Devon Still. Then they immediately signed him to the practice squad, for one reason only. So his health insurance wouldn't stop. His four year old daughter had just been given a 50/50 chance to live. June 2, 2014. Doctors walk into a waiting room and tell Devon Still that Leah, his four year old, has stage four neuroblastoma. A pediatric cancer. Fifty fifty odds. Still was a defensive tackle fighting for a roster spot. He missed most of training camp to be at the hospital, and when cuts came, he didn't make the 53 man roster. For most players that's the end. No team, no salary, and critically, no insurance. The Bengals signed him to the practice squad anyway. Not because they needed him. Because it kept his family covered, and gave him the freedom to fly to Philadelphia to be with his daughter whenever he needed. Then head coach Marvin Lewis and the organization did something else. They started selling Devon Still's number 75 jersey, and announced they would donate ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of the proceeds to pediatric cancer research at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. A backup defensive tackle's jersey. It became the best selling jersey in the NFL. Fans of other teams bought it. Rival organizations ordered them in bulk. Opposing players wore them. The Bengals eventually handed Cincinnati Children's a check for $1.3 million. Leah, meanwhile, was fighting. Chemotherapy. Radiation. Surgery to remove a tumor. Stem cell transplants. Her father documented all of it publicly, because he decided that if his family had to go through it, other families shouldn't have to feel alone in it. Then on March 25, 2015, Devon Still posted this: "June 2, 2014 and March 25, 2015 are days I will remember for the rest of my life." 296 days after the diagnosis, Leah Still was in remission. There was one more scare, a serious complication from the transplant that summer. She beat that too. By December 2015, her scans showed no evidence of disease at all. She got a Wheaties box. She and her dad won the Jimmy V Perseverance Award at the ESPYs, and she recorded a video message thanking everyone who helped her beat up cancer, because she was too sick to attend in person. The Bengals eventually released Devon Still for real in September 2015. And they made sure his medical insurance would stay active for five more years anyway, whether or not another team ever signed him. Leah is a teenager now. Healthy. She and her dad have written children's books for kids going through what she went through. Her advice to those kids: "You're not fighting this alone." An NFL team spent a roster spot on a dad instead of a player. For more stories like this, follow us on any platform @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.