Meet NBA’s unluckiest ballboy, who has TWICE sold sneakers gifted to him by Michael Jordan

Applesauce on graham crackers, the snack of an NBA champion. It’s also, unbelievably, the spark to ignite one of the weirder stories in basketball folklore that sparked a multimillion-dollar quarrel.

The applesauce was an essential part of Michael Jordan’s pregame routine during his all-conquering years with the Chicago Bulls. And as Utah Jazz ballboy and Bulls fan Preston Truman found out, it was the shortcut to getting into the good books of the man all of America wanted five minutes with.

In November 1996, before a regular season game between the Jazz and the Bulls, Truman overheard Jordan calling out to his trainer for his crackers and applesauce. The crackers were there, the applesauce wasn’t.

“I thought it was odd to hear him ask his trainer that,” Truman told the LA Times in 2013.

“Jordan turned his head around and looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘If I don’t get my applesauce, nobody’s getting autographs.'”

Jordan’s performance that day is remembered because he became unwell – although he was first thought to have the flu, he later revealed that he was actually struggling with food poisoning

Despite being sick, Jordan scored 38 points as the Bulls fought back to beat the Jazz

That was all Truman needed to hear – he ran around the stadium frantically and finally brought the goods to Jordan about 40 minutes before the game started.

The following June, when the Jazz met the Bulls in the Finals, Truman was assigned the Bulls locker room for Games 3, 4, and 5. He arrived with applesauce and crackers for Jordan, all as part of a plan to get Jordan to change his shoes. to ask. , according to Truman’s version of events in the Salt Lake Tribune.

“You remembered?” Jordan asked. ‘That’s my man over there. It’s Preston, right?’

Game 5 of the series was Jordan’s infamous “flu game,” where he struggled with food poisoning from a pepperoni pizza he ordered the night before the game when he couldn’t get to sleep.

But at the time, Truman was friends with Jordan to have the confidence to ask him for his shoes after the game, despite being visibly unwell and needing an IV before the game.

Truman’s access to the locker room meant he would have been one of the first to know how unwell Jordan was. Jordan asked him to get some tickets to the Jazz stadium front office and it led Truman to ask if he had any plans to give away his AirJordans after the game.

“Why, do you want them?” Jordan asked. And he kept his word after an all-time NBA classic—playing through the pain barrier, scoring 38 points, seven rebounds, five assists and three steals.

“It became such an epic game that I felt like I was standing next to Babe Ruth when he called,” Truman told the Chicago Tribune. “And then I got nervous because I knew the locker room would be full and other people would want his shoes. Charles Barkley was there. So I wasn’t sure.’

Jordan’s legendary ‘Flu Game’ sneakers sold for an astonishing $1.38 million this week

And the 1998 Air Jordan 13s worn by Jordan sold for $2.2 million earlier this year

The 1998 sneakers were worn on a great night for Jordan in what is now remembered as a ‘Last Dance’ game after his Netflix documentary

Jordan drew them for Truman, his bodyguard who took photos of the moment that would later serve as the method of authentication for the shoes when they were auctioned.

The following season, Jordan and Truman crossed paths again in Utah and again Jordan gifted Truman another pair of signed sneakers. The “Air Jordan XIII Breds” that wore the Bulls star during Game 2 of the 1998 NBA Finals were handed over – Jordan scored 37 points that night in what is now known as the “Last Dance” season.

So while Utah itself doesn’t have fond memories of when Jordan was in town, Truman himself does. And while the best player in NBA history made the teen feel like the happiest basketball fan in the world at the time, something later happened that made him regret it.

In April 2023, Truman filed a lawsuit against Gray Flannel auctions and operations director Michael Russek, alleging that “through a combination of high-pressure sales tactics, fraudulent misrepresentation, coercion, and implied threats, the defendants forced the plaintiff to fraudulently induced to enter into a sales contract. with Defendants at an unreasonably low value.”

The articles in question? Those two pairs of shoes.

The first to sell were the Last Dance shoes in May 2020. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, a deal between Russek and Gray Flannel saw Truman sell the shoes for $215,000.

In April 2023, the same pair went for a record $2.238 million, the highest amount ever paid for a pair of NBA sneakers.

This week, the “Flu Game” sneakers sold at auction for $1.38 million, ten years after Gray Flannel sold them for $104,765.

In the 98 game between Bulls and Jazz, Jordan scored a whopping 37 points for his team

The ball boy, Preston Truman, provided a letter of authenticity with the shoes

In the lawsuit, Truman claims that in May 2020, with almost the entire world in lockdown due to Covid-19 around the release of Netflix’s Last Dance, he was pressured to make a ‘now-or-never’ deal to to sell the shoes. .

The lawsuit alleges that Russek called Truman and claimed to represent an unnamed private buyer from abroad who wanted to buy the 1998 Finals shoes and keep them in a personal collection, vowing never to sell them. The $215,000 was said to be non-negotiable and final, and a three-hour time limit was given to accept.

Truman claims that Russek played on his lack of knowledge about the sports memorabilia market by telling him that $215,000 would be the best offer he could get for the shoes.

Around the time Truman sold his “Flu Game” shoes in 2013, he gave an interview saying he was working as a salesman and at age 35 was ready to cash in on his slice of NBA history.

“I’m 35 and 40 is just around the corner, and time seems to go faster as you get older,” he told SLT. “Maybe it’s just time to get those things out there.”

The publication also added that Truman wanted to lift the lid on what he calls the “applesauce story.”

In total, Truman himself made $319,765 from the sale of his two pairs of Jordan shoes, but they’ve since made another $3,299 million after he sold them.

Jordan revealed that his famous ‘flu game’ in the 1997 NBA Finals was actually a case of food poisoning he blamed on bad pizza during his iconic ‘Last Dance’ Netflix series

There is at least one financial reason for little atonement for Truman.

When he was 19, he was offered $11,000 in cash for the Flu Game shoes, but he wasn’t willing to part with it. And later his mother almost brushed the scrapes off, only for him to stop her in time.

With the $104,000 he got, he told the Chicago Tribune that he paid off some debt and spent extra money on his kids going to college.

“The money was life-changing, but mostly as a buffer,” Truman said at the time. “It’s nice to have.”