The infamous Michael Jordan “flu game” story took on a new life this week when it was revealed in “The Last Dance” that Jordan’s friends believe he became ill after eating a pizza that had been poisoned. One of the men who made and delivered the pizza insists that never happened.
A Utah man named Craig Fite posted on Facebook Monday that he was the one who cooked and delivered the pizza to Jordan the night before Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals, and he swears it was not tainted. Fite later appeared on 1280 The Zone’s “The Big Show” to share his side of the story. Fite said he was an assistant manager at Pizza Hut at the time, and he was the only Bulls fan in the store. He said he knew where the players were staying and wanted to handle the order himself, so he told employees he was going to make the pizza because “I don’t want any of you doing anything to it.”
Jordan’s former trainer, Tim Grove, said in “The Last Dance” that he is 100 percent certain MJ had food poisoning. Fite isn’t buying it.
“That’s a bunch of crap,” Fite said. “It’s one of those things where I’m like, great, did you get it diagnosed? Did you go to the doctor and find out? No, all of this is innuendo on their part.”
Fite then wondered if it was something else that made Jordan ill.
“One thing I remind everybody — he was smoking so many cigars, they had windows open, he didn’t have a shirt on or was in a tank top or whatever,” Fite said. “As you guys know darn good and well, at around 3 or 4 in the afternoon in Park City, the sun’s gone behind that mountain. It gets colder up there. I don’t know what the temperature was, but chances are he’s had this … or they could have brought him food from somewhere else if it really was food poisoning.
“That pizza was made well. I followed all the rules.”
Fite added that he was trying to get promoted to store manager at the time, so he was committed to doing everything right and not slipping up.
We’ll never know what it really was that made Jordan ill. Stories now range from food poisoning to a severe hangover after Jordan was partying all night, but it’s possible not even MJ knows the truth about what really happened. The best thing to come of the “flu game” story resurfacing may have been the tweet a frozen pizza company sent about it.
