SALT LAKE CITY _ On a table inside a dark room at the old Delta Center, Michael Jordan lay flat on his back, wearing only his North Carolina shorts with a white T-shirt and feeling ill an hour before Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals.
You probably remember it as The Flu Game.
Preston Truman, now 39, recalls standing alone next to Jordan in that room as an IV pumped fluids into the Bulls superstar. The Jazz ball boy who developed a special connection with Jordan still marvels at his moxie that night.
Jordan instructed Truman to take his Game 5 tickets to will call, one of the ball boy's usual tasks. After taking Jordan's tickets out of his hand, Truman built up the nerve to ask a question.
"It was the perfect moment, nobody was around, and I slumped over and said, 'Hey, Michael, are you doing anything with your shoes after the game?' " Truman recalled last week in a downtown hotel. "He said, 'No, do you want them?' I said, 'I'd be honored.' "
Just before Truman left the room, he got the answer that still makes him smile.
"They're yours," Jordan told him.
Truman never anticipated those shoes one day being worth $104,000. The teenager never considered he was about to become, unwittingly, part of NBA legend. He simply savored the privilege of spending time inside the Bulls inner sanctum as trainer Chip Schaefer and team doctors discussed whether Jordan would play in the pivotal game of a series tied 2-2.
"There were only a few guys back there and me. ... I was pinching myself," Truman said. "Sometimes I still can't believe under those circumstances, I asked Michael Jordan for his shoes."
It took nerve and required a comfort level Truman had established during Jordan's visit earlier that NBA season.
