—Ralph Waldo Emerson On the morning of Game Five of the 1997 NBA Finals against Utah, during what would be his next-to-last flourish in pro O basketball, Michael Jordan was swathed in blankets in a Salt Lake City hotel room, curled into a fetal position, his body limp and wracked with illness. He had a hundred-degree fever. Headaches and nausea had kept him awake all night. He was being pumped with intravenous fluids to replenish his strength. Word circulated that Jordan was profoundly ill. In the locker room, his teammates surveyed his unusually ashen skin, and television cameras captured Jordan’s laconic attempts to practice before the game began. The Jazz pulled out to an early lead. And yet it was Jordan who kept his team in the game, scoring twenty-one points in the first half, playing nearly the entire second half even as his body began to wither and his energy faded. He hit a three-pointer to give the Bulls the lead, and they won, 90–88. He’d scored fifteen points in the fourth quarter.
