Wayman Tisdale dead at 44

Tisdale was a three-time all-American at Oklahoma before joining the NBA and playing for the Indiana Pacers, the Sacramento Kings and the Phoenix Suns. A 6-foot-9 forward, he averaged 15.3 points for his career and played for the U.S. team that won a gold medal at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Tisdale was well liked both on and off the court. Oklahoma Coach Jeff Capel described him as "one of the best people I have ever had the privilege of knowing." Capel said the former Sooner hoops star "had an incredible gift of making the people who came in contact with him feel incredibly special."

In February 2007, Tisdale discovered he had cancer after he broke his leg in an accident and was told that he had a cyst below his knee. He later had his leg amputated.

At a particularly difficult time in his therapy after a long session with chemotherapy marked by sickness and weight loss, a doctor told Tisdale that he would had to go through the whole process again. "It was like letting the wind out of a balloon," Tisdale said in a tearful interview (shown in the second video below). He stopped the interview and cried for a moment. "To get to a point where everything that you've been taught, all the faith that you've grown up with, and all the things that your dad and mom had put into you, and for that to be now all you could rely on -- all I had was God."

Tisdale also said his 1984 Olympic coach Bobby Knight had taught him a valuable lesson because he "didn't want me to make it." At the time Tisdale "frowned on that," but later he came to be thankful because Knight toughened him for his experience with cancer.

Last September, Tisdale released a video (below) in which he spoke to a camera while sitting on a sofa without his right leg and announced that he was at peace. During the video, he also played the guitar and sang his song "It's Alright."

Tisdale died at St. John Medical Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Friday. He is survived by his wife Regina and their four children. He was 44.