Twenty-eight years ago, this past week, NBA legend Michael Jordan played in what was arguably the most famous game of his stored career. A game that quickly came to be known as the “flu game.”
Suffering from flu-like symptoms, the hall-of-fame shooting guard scored 38 points including a go-ahead 3-pointer with 25 seconds remaining to lift his Chicago Bulls to a 90-88 win over the Utah Jazz and 3-2 series lead in the 1997 NBA Finals. It is a performance still regularly referenced even today and one that helped elevate Jordan’s legacy to an even higher level.
On the most recent episode of Throwbacks with Matt Leinart and Jerry Ferrara, this memorable sports anniversary sparked Ferrara to recall a similar but lesser-known story involving another legend of his profession, Academy Award winning actor Morgan Freeman, while they were filming the 2013 comedy, Last Vegas.
“We had this big sequence in Last Vegas,” said Ferrara, “where Morgan Freeman’s character has to ballroom dance with this girl. It’s a big part of the whole movie. And Morgan Freeman, who’s not a young guy – this is ten years ago – comes to work [with] like a hundred and three fever, right? If there’s anyone on the face of the earth that could call in sick and say ‘hey, I’m not going to be able to do it today guys,’ it’s Morgan Freeman.”
But instead, Ferrara remembers Freeman speaking with the crew and relaying a much different message.
“Morgan Freeman comes to set, and he says ‘guys, I feel awful, this is real bad… But I’m gonna give you what I got.”
Ferrara, who played the role of Dean alongside Freeman, then described the veteran actor – in his mid-70’s at the time – proceeding to film one of the more strenuous scenes of the movie.
“He was dancing with the young lady. They call ‘cut,’ they’re wrapping him in blankets. They kept saying ‘Morgan, we will shut down set! You don’t have to work!”
Ultimately, Freeman fought through the illness and left Ferrara feeling like he had just witnessed Hollywood’s version of the “flu game.”
“That always stuck out to me… Morgan Freeman. If anyone could take a day off, certainly would have been him. So, he had a ‘flu game.’”
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