6 Chapter Six: ESPN’s SportsCentury, Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals—“The Flu Game” (2002)

Almost 20 years before the release of The Last Dance, ESPN made another movie about “The Flu Game,” and in this one the “Worldwide Leader” was actually concerned with what really happened.

ESPN’s SportsCentury series represented the network at its absolute best. It started as a weekly countdown of the 50 greatest athletes of all time as the 20th century marched slowly towards its dramatic conclusion. The year 1999 was a weird time to be alive, and ESPN aimed to capture that strangeness and put it into production.

Even if you didn’t believe the whole planet was on the verge of shutting down the very second the bells tolled midnight on January 1st, 2000, there were plenty of people who did think the new year was ringing in global destruction. So much so that thoughts of the end of the world were difficult to avoid.

Y2K truthers weren’t the only notable thing about that year. While a handful of folks believed we were on the brink of the rapture, 1999 staked its claim as one of the most seminal calendar years in the history of popular culture. Often for the better and sometimes, unfortunately so, very much for the worse.

It was the year that gave us the whitest and angriest music festival of all time with Woodstock ‘99 (worse), and in the same summer, gave us Brandi Chastain delivering the shot heard ‘round the world as the U.S. women’s soccer team won the World Cup while the entire world watched (better). Will Smith remixed one of Prince’s most popular songs (somewhere in between better and worse). It was the year that marked the debut of The Sopranos (better) and the return of Star Wars to the worldwide box office with Episode I: The Phantom Menace (worse, but Darth Maul is still dope). In hip-hop, it was a banner year that featured Eminem’s first studio album with The Slim Shady LP (good), Dr. Dre’s The Chronic 2001 (better), and Mos Def’s Black on Both Sides (best). In the movies, it was the year we learned that “we never talk about Fight Club,” that Neo is the one, and that Bruce Willis was dead the whole damn time. The St. Louis Rams were “The Greatest Show on Turf,” and an afternoon at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, was worse than our darkest nightmares.

All of this took place while a not-large-but-also-not-small portion of the population truly believed New Year’s Eve 1999 would be the end of the human race as we know it. It’s impossible to paint an accurate picture of the moment to anyone who wasn’t there.

In any other year, Michael Jordan not playing basketball, while still at the height of his powers, may have taken the cake as the strangest development. But in 1999, it was just another thing Americans were juggling in their consciousness on a daily basis. Jordan’s second retirement still didn’t feel real. The ripples he and the Chicago Bulls sent through the world with “The Shot,” “The Last Dance,” and their sixth championship—their second three-peat were still reverberating. In 1999, the Chicago Bulls were the worst team in the Eastern Conference by a comfortable margin. Turning their games on didn’t feel real. By the end of that lockout-shortened season, it felt like No. 23 in red and black would swoop in and save the day. Young people who came of age in the 90s (known today as Millennials, a term that wasn’t invented until long after society safely and successfully entered life in the 2000s), literally did not know a world where the Chicago Bulls were bad at playing basketball.

Watching the Chicago Bulls as a bad basketball team was as shocking as watching The Sixth Sense and realizing Bruce Willis was dead the whole time.

Concurrent to all the other popular culture goings-on in 1999, ESPN pumped out some of its most prolific, highest-quality work in the history of the network. SportsCentury laid the groundwork for ESPN Films to launch 30 for 30 a decade later and take the art of the sports documentary into a completely different stratosphere.

The genius of SportsCentury existed in its simplicity. Each individual documentary of the series ran for either 22 minutes or 42 minutes. There was no room for bullshit. The footage left on the cutting room floor would likely own the Netflix Top 10 if it was released today. The approach was simple: interview the people closest to the story, highlight the most relevant quotes, pan over some still frames of the subject matter like it’s Ken Burns: Baseball and turn the sepia tone all the way up to 11. The result was nearly a hundred Oscar-worthy documentary short films.

The series was so successful it expanded from 50 athletes to 100, then to hundreds more. It didn’t take long to add specific games, full teams, and other special moments in sports history to the subject matter. ESPN chose only four single games worthy of their own features (though these turned out to be so popular they soon added a countdown of “Greatest Games of the 20th Century” that included ten more): the controversial men’s basketball gold medal game between the United States and the Soviet Union at the 1972 Olympics, the “Epic in Miami” when the Chargers beat the Dolphins in overtime in the 1981 NFL Wildcard, the 1985 NCAA men’s championship between Georgetown and Villanova, and of course, “The Flu Game.”

“The Flu Game” is one of the most essential pieces of 1990s NBA lore, and ESPN dedicated their best filmmaking efforts to telling its story when the 90s were barely over.

Neither Tim Grover nor George Koehler are interviewed in “The Flu Game” episode of SportsCentury. Ahmad Rashad—who features prominently in The Last Dance but not in the segment on “The Flu Game”—confirms in the first few minutes that he was in Jordan’s hotel room at the Park City Marriott the night before the game and a pizza did arrive.

“The night before, we were all in Michael’s room when the pizza came,” Rashad said. “I luckily didn’t have any of the pizza. The next morning I remember speaking to him saying that he was really sick, like really, really sick.”

Neither Rashad nor anyone else who appears in the documentary mentions a supposed “Poisonous Pizza Posse” of five guys in the hallway trying to get a glimpse of Jordan before poisoning him. A few of the reporters who covered the game in person brought up the food poisoning theory as one of the rumors swirling around that day. Each one of them dismisses it with a smile and a laugh. Immediately after we hear from Rashad for the first, but not the last time, we’re introduced to the individual I believe to be the single most glaring omission from The Last Dance. The individual Grover referred to but did not name when he said, “Go get the team doc, now!” The Bulls Team Doctor has arrived on the set. Allow me to introduce you to Dr. Jeffrey Weinberg.

“About nine o’clock in the morning we’re going to practice and somebody says, ‘one of the players is sick,’ and it turned out it was Michael,” Dr. Weinberg said. “I went to his room and Michael didn’t look very well. He had been up for six or seven hours with a headache and nausea. I examined him and he wasn’t dehydrated, he wasn’t having diarrhea, so I gave him a couple medications to get some rest and relax his stomach and told him I’d check on him after practice.”

It’s not the last time in the documentary Dr. Weinberg mentions Jordan’s diarrhea, or lack thereof. Considering Jordan was a producer of The Last Dance, I suppose we can extend a little bit of grace towards him if he did make the decision to omit Weinberg. If I were charged with putting together a 10-hour documentary about myself, I’m not sure how keen I’d be on making sure the person with the most knowledge of my bowel movements got significant airtime.

Maybe Dr. Weinberg was interviewed for The Last Dance and Jordan and/or the rest of the producers left his insight on the cutting room floor for time and/or dramatic effect. Maybe he wasn’t interviewed at all because he unequivocally denied the food poisoning theory for SportsCentury in 2002. For what it’s worth, The Last Dance’s director, Jason Hehir has insisted that Jordan had nothing to do with the final cut. Whether the man in charge of the health and wellness of the greatest dynasty the sports world has ever known was an intentional or accidental omission doesn’t change the fact that he is the most key witness to getting to the bottom of what really led to Jordan’s physical condition prior to Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals. It’s not a secret that almost nobody buys Jordan and his entourage’s food poisoning theory. Most of the basketball world dismisses it as a simple case of Michael being Michael and taking control of his own narrative.

Were there five guys in the hallway? Probably! Hotels where NBA teams are staying are a hub of activity. Episode 10 of The Last Dance portrays the Bulls’ team hotel as an absolute circus during the 1998 NBA Finals. Even the most generous reading of Grover and Kohler’s statements that five guys were in the hallway when the pizza came can’t arrive at a conclusive conclusion that all five of them came from the pizza place.

There are other theories of course. Jordan’s teammate Steve Kerr said on the Bill Simmons Podcast in 2017 that it was altitude sickness. Former NBA player and current media personality Jalen Rose calls it the “hangover game,” and that Michael’s condition could be explained by partying late into the night.

To me, Kerr’s theory is the more sound of the two, but the Bulls had already been in Utah for a number of days by that point. Game 5 occurred after Game 3 and Game 4, naturally, that’s how numbers work, Terry. Game 3 was held on June 6, Game 4 on June 8, and Game 5 on June 11. It’s a rarity for the symptoms of altitude sickness to be delayed for a couple of days, but it does happen. The symptoms of altitude sickness hitting Jordan on day five or six of the trip to Utah doesn’t feel likely. Rose’s theory is probably the most popular. Jordan loved to gamble as much as he loved to compete. Fans could easily convince themselves of a high-stakes card game taking place in Jordan’s room as the whiskey flowed until the sun rose. He’s shown on camera gambling with his security guys at several points during The Last Dance. Part of Jordan’s love of gambling comes from him also being the most insanely competitive person alive. While Jordan showed himself to be many things good and bad during his career, prone to distraction during an NBA Finals was never one of them.

It seems pretty clear that Jordan didn’t attend the Bulls’ shootaround that morning. It was also clear to Dr. Weinberg that the medication he gave Jordan was having a positive effect when he checked on him after the conclusion of said shootaround.

“I went back up after practice and he was better,” Weinberg said. “He ate a steak before the game. His blood pressure and everything else was fine. He had a minimal headache, if at all, and he wanted to go and play.”

Hold on, Doc, Michael Jordan ate a fucking steak before Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals?! A day he claims to be the victim of a nefarious food poisoning scheme is a day he also ate a steak while dealing with the symptoms of food poisoning?!

I’ve been unfortunate enough to deal with food poisoning a time or two in my career and lucky enough that none of those times took place while publicly pursuing a world championship. Michael was said to be in the fetal position with his arms wrapped around the toilet mere hours before Game 5 tipped off. Most human beings in such a position can adjust their schedules to ensure they don’t have to do anything for the next several hours/days, and almost no one else needs to worry about showing up to their day job and having their fevered performance broadcasted to more than 20 million people (Game 5 was the most watched game of the 1997 NBA Finals). Michael did just that, though, and he apparently enjoyed a nice New York Strip or Filet Mignon before doing so.

This may seem a bit wild. I’m no fitness expert, but most doctors don’t recommend digesting red meat before extensive physical exertion like playing in an NBA Finals game, but according to one of his closest allies, Jordan never stepped onto the floor without enjoying a meal featuring his protein of choice first.

“I ate steak before most games,” Charles Oakley, Jordan’s teammate and protector from 1985-88, says in Rich Cohen’s brilliant book When the Game Was War: the NBA’s greatest season, which chronicles the Bulls, Celtics, Lakers and Pistons through the 1988 NBA season, “but Michael literally had steak before 100 percent of his games. And before 90% of our practices, he ate McDonald’s breakfast.”

Individuals like Grover and Kohler do also have valuable insight as Jordan’s most trusted confidants, but they have also made lifetime careers by doing his bidding. A contrast with Dr. Weinberg, who has absolutely no reason to lie about any medical conclusions he came to at any point during his tenure with the Bulls.

The non-Weinberg interviews of SportsCentury are very similar to the portrayal of events spun by The Last Dance. The Bulls were against the ropes. It looked like this might be the first time Michael Jordan couldn’t deliver! And just when everyone seemed to collectively believe the Bulls were dead, Michael comes back from the dead and saves the day.

It’s not incorrect, and as stated previously, Jordan’s performance on his own is worth revisiting time and again. It’s also worth revisiting Dr. Weinberg’s medical opinions from that day and asking questions. Specifically, one.

• Question No. 3: Why did ESPN interview Bulls Team Physician Dr. Jeffrey Weinberg for SportsCentury in 2002, but not for The Last Dance in 2020?

Upon arriving at The Delta Center in downtown Salt Lake City after the windy bus ride from Park City, Jordan was dizzy and had difficulty walking down the arena hallways. His teammate Randy Brown said he looked “half dead.”

There’s no pregame scenario that exists that could be more stressful for a team doctor. Dr. Weinberg, at this crucial juncture, treated the G.O.A.T. with one of mankind’s most common and relied upon forms of medicine.

“Coffee is very good for inner ear type things, so we gave him four, five, six cups of coffee, and he felt a little better,” Dr. Weinberg said of his pregame treatment of Michael before adding a few crucial details of his medical assessment. “He did not vomit that I know of; he did not have any diarrhea. He did not have any bad pizza to cause anything like that. He probably had a virus. He wanted to play. His blood pressure, his vital signs, everything else was fine.”

A virus? Just a common virus? A regular virus that regular people get all the time made Michael Jordan feel that bad?! How could it be?! There must be some explanation!

The only other theory shared in SportsCentury is mentioned by media members Phil Taylor from Sports Illustrated and Sam Smith of the Chicago Tribune (also the infamous author of the book The Jordan Rules) who speculated that Jordan may not have been that sick, and this was rather “Michael’s rope-a-dope,” and that “if he could con you, he would con you.”

Jordan pretending to be sick to lull the Jazz into a false sense of security before the most pivotal game anyone on their team had ever played does make a lot more sense than any other theory that’s ever been speculated about “The Flu Game,” besides the flu itself, naturally.

Jordan himself doesn’t refute any theory until Episode IX of The Last Dance when he says, “It wasn’t the flu game; it was food poisoning.” He offers all of one quote in the entire episode of SportsCentury, and It! Is! Interesting!

“The thing about me as a person, me as a basketball player later in my years, is that inside my head I had to start creating challenges for myself inside my head because I accomplished everything people said I couldn’t do.”

We have no way of knowing what kind of question this was in response to from Jordan. We just know that when he overcame every obstacle this world threw at him, he created more obstacles to overcome in his own world. In this insight lies the key to his greatness.

The Alexander the Great quote aptly applies here: “And Alexander wept, seeing as he had no more worlds left to conquer.” If Alexander were as great as Michael Jordan, he would have invented more worlds to conquer.

(A rabbit hole I will avoid falling down for now, but that often used quote is not attributed to any text whatsoever, it was conjured somewhere, someday, but no historians have been able to cite it to any known text, which makes the lores of Alexander the Great and Michael Jordan similar in multiple ways, in another essay I will…)

Michael Jordan is the G.O.A.T., and Alexander the Great was the King of Macedon, and Dr. Jeffrey Weinberg held the most sought after position in all of sports medicine in the 1990s, yet the most beautifully succinct review of “The Flu Game” belongs to Ahmad Rashad. A shame it only exists in SportsCentury and within the few sickos like me who remember it and not also The Last Dance.

“If you put on the uniform, you’re able to play,” Rashad said. “There are no excuses. That’s the essence of professional sports. To say he had such a great game and he was sick. What does that mean? If he wasn’t sick he’d have a better game? I don’t think so. That was a great performance whether he was sick or he wasn’t.”

SportsCentury differs from The Last Dance in several ways, but the purposes of both films are the same. They only exist to answer questions in part. The real priority is to add to the legend.