Michael Jordan: 3 takeaways from episodes 9, 10 of ‘The Last Dance’

The “flu game” was actually the “food poisoning game”?

With the 1997 NBA Finals between the Bulls and Jazz tied at 2-2, there’s was a great chance that whoever won Game 5 in Salt Lake City was going to win the series. At the very least, whichever team won the game was going to have a huge upper hand in the series.

The big problem for the Bulls was the fact that Michael Jordan was sick. History often remembers this moment as a setup for “The Flue Game.” However, in the documentary, it was revealed that Michael actually had food poisoning. As the story goes, Jordan ordered a pizza at 10:30 p.m. the night before the game and actually got sick from it.

Michael said that he couldn’t hold anything down and was in bed all day leading up to the game. Jordan would go on to play 44 minutes and score 38 points, including the game-winning 3-pointer in the waning seconds of the game.

I guess “The Food Poisoning Game” simply doesn’t have the same ring to it as “The Flu Game.”