Remember when Michael Jordan scored 38 points during Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals despite the fact that he had the flu? Of course you do. The "Flu Game" as it's called now is one of the games that helped turn MJ into a living legend. But, as it turns out, he may have been suffering from something entirely different than the flu during that game.
According to MJ's former trainer Tim Grover, MJ was actually poisoned prior to Game 5. He talked about it recently with TrueHoop TV.
"He was poisoned for the 'flu game,'" Grover explained. "Everyone called it a flu game, but we sat there. We were in the room."
Grover talked specifically about why he believes MJ was poisoned.
"We were in Park City, Utah, up in a hotel," he said. "Room service stopped at like nine o'clock. He got hungry and we really couldn't find any other place to eat. So we said, 'Eh, the only thing I can find is a pizza place.' So we say, 'Alright, order pizza.' We had been there for awhile. Everybody knew what hotel. Park City was not many hotels back then. So everyone kind of knew where we were staying. 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. And then 2 o'clock in the morning, I get a call to my room. Come to the room. He's curled up in the fetal position. We're looking at him, finding the team physician at that time. Immediately I told him it's food poisoning. Not the flu."
And, well, the rest is history. Flu? Food poisoning? Hungover? Whatever. MJ won the game anyway. That's all that really matters.
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[via TrueHoop]
