![]() So, I talked to Chip about it and reflecting about it with my trainer, my trainer said, 'I think coming back down out of altitudes helped him. Like we had a, 'This is going to go all right,' type of thing. We got behind in the second quarter and came back and so we were kind of in better spirits at halftime. "Well, I thought he got better as the game went along. While Jordan's former coach recounts the details of that day, one thing he seems to mention off-handedly is his belief of what caused the alleged food poisoning. That was pretty much the springboard for the Jackson interview. The hyper-vigilant fact-checking crew at The New Yorker allowed the following sentence to run in a 1998 story by David Halberstam: "Whether it was altitude sickness or food poisoning no one was ever quite sure." There was another theory that speculated that Jordan was suffering a form of altitude sickness. More importantly than that, however, is how the gastroenteritis was known to be what team staff claimed Jordan's ailment was. Lincicome expresses more healthy skepticism towards the ailment later on in the column saying if Jordan was acting exhausted and physically debilitated, it was a better performance than the one he gave in Space Jam. Whatever Jordan ate that disagreed with him, whatever mountain bug got up his nose, whether it was flu or fatigue or frustration, the officially diagnosed viral gastroenteritis, or whether it was a grand ruse, it ought to be passed around to the rest of the Bulls, who now need to win only one game at home to finish the Drive for Five. But even as in sports columns that were printed as early as the next day, such as the one Bernie Lincicome wrote for the Jedition of the Chicago Tribune, the notion of Jordan suffering from the flu seemed to have already been dispelled. Throughout the game, some version of those lines were repeated ad nauseam by the broadcasters, with the word "flu" likely having been forever imprinted onto the brains of the viewing public. The vomiting continued as he spent time in a dark room prior to the game. Rashad said he had a stomach ache, a headache, threw up all night, stayed in bed all day and threw up all day then. Jordan looked physically awful throughout the game but ultimately scored 38 points, including the game-icing shot, to help his team win and take a 3-2 series lead.Īfter Jordan was introduced in the team's starting lineup, reporter Ahmad Rashad gave further details to Jordan's symptoms. ![]() Jordan arrived at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City just after 5 pm and spent pregame in a dark room vomiting before telling coach Phil Jackson he was ready to play. ![]() Jordan missed his team's shoot-around prior to the game. Here are the facts that we can absolutely verify to be true: Jordan did not attend a breakfast he scheduled with Scottie Pippen and Ron Harper the morning of the game. But how much do we actually know about that famous June evening? Rushmore of Jordan's career, but it also belongs in the pantheon of the greatest single-game performances in NBA history. The performance not only belongs on the Mt. We're talking, of course, about the "flu game." For the uninitiated, this moment of glory came in Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals where a physically debilitated Jordan was able to put together a herculean effort, overcome an ailment that had him curled up in a fetal position and vomiting until the early hours of the morning, and help guide the Chicago Bulls to a 90-88 win over the Utah Jazz. Yet, one of Jordan's greatest physical accomplishments has been the subject of 'well actually-ing' and speculation since, well, the moment it ended. Questioning the greatness of Michael Jordan is a fool's errand that only the smarmiest of hot-take edgelords would dare consider doing. ![]()
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