Michael Jordan the Flu game

The legend of jordan's flu game through the 1997 NBA Finals is growing, possibly quite like Pinocchio's nose, you decide.

Tim Grover, Jordan's former trainer, told TrueHoop television that MJ contracted meals poisoning before their famed 37-point overall performance in Game 5. The meals poisoning itself isn't the matter — it absolutely was initially suspected the "flu" where Jordan suffered was related to one thing he ate. What's newsworthy is Grover's claim that a rogue pizza delivery man had been responsible for the disease.

Into the interview, Grover describes how the team was in Park City, Utah, therefore had been too-late to purchase area solution. They labeled as a pizza destination to deliver to the team resort, which Grover claims ended up being dominant by locals.

Five dudes found deliver this pizza pie. I make the pizza and I inform them: "I got a poor sensation about any of it. I've just got a poor sensation concerning this." Away from every person within the area, [MJ] ended up being the only person just who ate. Nobody else had it. Then 2 o'clock in the morning I get a call to my space. Visited the space. He's curled up inside fetal position. We are viewing him, choosing the team physician in those days. Straight away We told him it's meals poisoning. Maybe not the flu.

Jordan don't get free from bed throughout the off-day when you look at the Finals, after that showed up to your Delta Center three hours before tip-off the following night, surprising his teammates, which anticipated him to miss out the game. He had been dehydrated along with lost body weight. That don't end him from playing 44 mins and scoring 37 things in an important three-point win.

Both stories require a stretch for the imagination, nevertheless meals poisoning story seems much more legit. Rose's hangover principle forced you to definitely make two huge presumptions. First, that MJ ever before got a hangover. 2nd, that a hangover he got in a Salt Lake City suburb was worse than the people he'd get while gaming in Atlantic City or club hopping in Chicago. It does not accumulate, Jalen.