What are you willing to give up in order to get your hands on the Air Jordan XII sneakers that Michael Jordan wore in the infamous "flu game" during the 1997 NBA Finals? Your car? Your house? Your 401K?
Unfortunately, it will probably take at least one of those things—and maybe all of those things—for you to get your hands on that particular pair of sneakers today. Grey Flannel Auctions is getting ready to auction them off to the highest bidder sometime in the near future, and they're expected to sell for tens of thousands of dollars, if not more. However, Preston Truman—the former Jazz ball boy who scored the sneakers from Jordan after the "flu game"—gave MJ something much, much, much less valuable in exchange for the sneakers back in 1997. All it cost him was some apple sauce and the sneakers were his.
Okay, so maybe it wasn't that easy. But Truman just did an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune and explained how he ended up with the sneakers 16 years ago. It seems that during a regular season Bulls/Jazz game in November 1996, Truman helped Jordan secure a can of apple sauce about 45 minutes before the contest started. Then, about seven months later, Truman made sure that graham crackers and apple sauce were waiting for MJ in his locker prior to Games 3, 4, and 5 of the NBA Finals. So when Truman got up enough nerve to ask Jordan for his sneakers prior to the "flu game," Jordan agreed to give them to him. And Truman has had the sneakers, which were autographed by Jordan, locked up in a safe deposit box at a bank ever since.
Now, Truman has decided to sell the sneakers. Even though they're a part of NBA history and are considered priceless, he has decided to get rid of them since they're not doing him much good locked up at the bank.
"I'm 35, and 40's just right around the corner," he told The Salt Lake Tribune, "and it seems like time goes by faster the older you get. Maybe it's just time to get those things out there."
So who wants them? One thing's for sure: It's going to cost you more than a few cans of apple sauce to get 'em.
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[via The Salt Lake Tribune]
