A pizza delivery man has denied being the source of Michael Jordan’s food poisoning before Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals between Utah and Chicago, as the Bulls star suggested in the documentary “The Last Dance.”
The huge success of the documentary “The Last Dance” about Michael Jordan’s huge career has unintended consequences. The Netflix series focused on a landmark episode experienced by “MJ”: “The Flu Game.” Prior to Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals, Jordan had been significantly weakened by vomiting. If some mentioned a flu, the main interested is certain: he was the victim of food poisoning.
In the episode of “The Last Dance”, his entourage targets those responsible: the delivery men of the pizza he had ordered. With an implied goal: to decrease it before the game against the Jazz the next day. A few days after the last two episodes aired, a man posted a message on Facebook, claiming to have prepared and delivered Jordan’s order himself. The man Craig Fite strongly denied such acts. For good reason: he was a Bulls fan.
At the time of the incident, he explained that he had recently been hired as assistant manager of a Pizza Hut in Utah, located near the hotel where the Bulls were staying. He points out that everyone in the restaurant industry knew where the Chicago superstars lived and quickly realized that the order was for one of them when he received the call.
“I said, ‘Well, I’m delivering it,'” Fite said on The Zone radio. I remember saying, ‘I’m going to make pizza, because I don’t want you to do anything.’ And then I said to the driver, ‘you’re going to take me there.'”
A different version of Jordan’s entourage
He assures that he has followed the food preparation guidelines scrupulously. All the ingredients were fresh and nothing was added that could have made Jordan sick, he promises. Fite and the driver went to the hotel, checked in at the front desk and went upstairs to the Bulls. “As soon as the door [de l’ascenseur] opened, it was like I was hit in the face with cigar smoke,” Fite said.
His story differs from that of Tim Grover, Jordan’s physical trainer, in The Last Dance. He described “five guys trying to look inside.” Fite assures him that there were only two of them.
The big guy who’s been saying all this lately (apparently referring to Grover) is the one who opened the door and gave me $20 for pizza and a tip. Fite says he asked to say hello to Jordan. Grover then allegedly opened the door for MJ to look up from his deck of cards and say, “Thank you, man.” In the documentary, Grover claims to have felt “a bad feeling” after the delivery.
Considerably diminished, Jordan signs an anthology match
An accusation that drives Fite mad. “Have they diagnosed pizza? Did he go to the doctor? All of this is an insinuation on their part. One thing I remind everyone of is that he smoked so many cigars. They had windows open. He didn’t have a shirt or he was in a tank top. Around 3 or 4 o’clock in the afternoon in Park City (the hotel district) the sun disappeared behind this mountain, so it’s colder up there.”
“Or they could have brought him food somewhere else if it was really food poisoning,” Fite continued. But this pizza was well made. I followed all the rules.”
Influenza or food poisoning, it didn’t change the story. The next day, Jordan, on the brink of relinquishment, finally delivered an anthology game with 38 points, giving the Bulls (3-2), who finally won for the fifth time in seven years.
