Nearly 16 years removed from Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals, where Michael Jordan unleashed one of the most iconic performances in sports history, the truth begins to unravel. The GOAT didn’t have the flu. Instead, it was a case of poisoned pizza, bubble guts and dehydration.
Jordan’s trainer, Tim Grover, has a new book coming soon entitled Relentless: From Good To Great To Unstoppable. And naturally with books comes the need for selling points, like so. The conspiracy theory that MJ dealt with food poisoning has been around for years, so the actual assertion isn’t anything terribly revealing. Per Grover, Jordan was hungry the night before G5. Everything was closed and the only spot open happened to be some random pizza parlor. The trainer-turned-author revealed to TrueHoopTV the series of events what went down June 10, 1997.
So we order pizza.
Five guys came to deliver this pizza.
I take the pizza and I tell them: “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. … I’ve just got a bad feeling about this.”
Out of everybody in the room, [MJ] was the only one who ate. Nobody else had it.
While having the flu and dropping 38-7-5 from your death court sounds infinitely more appealing than the “I’ve got the shits” game Grover insists happens, we’ve romanticized this story for years. You don’t get the flu before Game 5 and magically become healthy again by Game 6. It just doesn’t happen.
Sell your book though, Tim. Just know we’re all awaiting your next piece of literary work. You know, the one where you really tell us Jordan and Rodman took a late night flight to Vegas got shit-face wasted causing MJ to play with a hangover. That’s about the only way to make up for altering history now.
Previously — Three Short Stories About Michael Jordan’s “Flu Game”