Tag: Flu Game

The Flu Game, the Food Poisoning Game, the Pizza Game.

Whatever you want to call it, Craig Fite is trying to set the record straight about what may or may not have happened the night before Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals — the now-legendary game when Michael Jordan battled his own ailing body but scored 38 points to will the Chicago Bulls to a win over the Utah Jazz.

Fite, 50, says he was working at Park City Pizza Hut when the location’s driver motioned him over after a late-night order came in.

It was, the driver said, a pie (large, thin and crispy, extra pepperoni) they suspected was going to the Bulls, who Fite recalls were staying in a Park City Marriott outside of Salt Lake City.

“We knew what was going on,” he told For The Win on Monday night.

Fite was actually a Bulls fan; he’d adopted the team as his own after it drafted Michael Jordan. He’d become a huge fan of Jordan in 1982 after watching the then-North Carolina star beat his favorite college team, Georgetown, with an incredible jump shot.

The Bulls had already been in town for a few days, having come for Game 3 that was played on June 6. Tales of Bulls players, including Dennis Rodman, taking over local bars had floated around the resort town.

So when that fateful call came in, the then-assistant manager jumped on the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“As soon as that happened, I go, ‘If it’s one of the Bulls guys, I’m going to make the pizza.’ I was joking around and said, ‘I don’t trust you guys, I’ll make it so nothing happens,'” he said of his Jazz-loving coworkers, chuckling at the how ironic that statement was in hindsight.

The pizza that became the talk of the ninth episode of The Last Dance — Jordan and trainer Tim Grover suggested it might have caused the GOAT to come down with food poisoning — “basically never left me,” Fite claims. And yes, he says he washed his hands before making it.

Fite requested the driver take him to the Marriott. Dressed in Pizza Hut uniforms, they approached Bulls security and were sent to deliver it. He recalled some “hemming and hawing a little bit” about two people bringing a pizza in.

After getting up to the floor for their delivery, Fite remembers a Bulls player asked him who the pie was for, and when informed of the room number, the Jordan teammate responded exactly how you’d expect.

“That’s Mike,” Fite recalls the player responding. “Hands off, get out of here.”

Fite and his driver approached a room with a slight haze of cigar smoke emanating from it and knocked on the door. (Fite refutes Grover’s claim it was five men delivering a pizza.) Fite said Grover opened the door once, then backed away and returned to hand over a $20 bill and give a slight wave of his hand meant as a “keep the change” gesture for the $15 pie. But Fite had one request.

“Hey, can I at least say hi to Mike?”

The door opened, and Fite claims he saw Jordan with his back to the door. The legend waved his hand without turning around and said, “Thanks, man.”

We all know what happened the next night. Fite had the night off to watch his favorite team, and as the news broke in pregame that Jordan was suffering from flu-like symptoms, his phone rang with friends and family who he had told about his special delivery, many of whom were Jazz fans thanking him for whatever was ailing Jordan.

Fite denies there was any foul play, and he even remembers the district manager for the area calling and making sure “a bad batch of pepperoni” didn’t get Jordan and others who received pizzas that night sick.

When the story of the food poisoning came up in 2013, Fite tried to tell his side of the story — he said he emailed The Dan Patrick Show back then — and Sunday’s episode of The Last Dance sparked him to take it public again.

Now, we get to the hard part: Was it actually Fite who delivered that pizza? Through public records, we were able to verify that Fite lived in Park City at the time of the incident. We also reached out to Grover through a PR contact to ask if he remembered where the pizza came from. The response, through the rep: “He has no recollection and no comment on where the pizza came from.”

Fite understands the skepticism.

“Outside of people that worked there, you’re dealing with a whole bunch of ‘He said, she said,’ ” says Fite, who is now a Dick’s Sporting Goods manager in Orem, Utah. I asked Fite if he could provide any additional evidence to corroborate his story, and he connected me with Jose Duran, who confirmed he worked with Fite at that Pizza Hut, although he wasn’t working the night before the “Flu Game.”

Duran, now a 49-year-old Utah resident working for an alarm company, confirmed that he worked with Fite at the time, and that he had taken orders for the Bulls during their stay in 1997. The first order tipped him off.

“June is kind of an off-peak time,” Duran said. “It was around like 11 o’clock, there were only a couple of other places besides us that delivered. It was a big order. That’s when (our driver) found out it was the Bulls, because there was security and then you could take it up to the room.”

He made a good point as well.

“If it would have been something malicious, why wouldn’t have we done it the second time they ordered?” he asked, referring to another big order taken to the Marriott prior to the delivery of Jordan’s lone pizza. No one, as far as we know, got sick from that batch.

Michael Jordan confirms that the ‘Flu Game’ in game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals was actually food poisoning…5 dudes delivering a single pizza 🧐 #LastDance pic.twitter.com/I7E4qmsE2f

— Kevin Gray Jr. (@CTSportsRadio) May 18, 2020

So the mystery of what really ailed Jordan that night in Utah lives on, with so much uncertainty and too many questions surrounding it. We’ll probably never really know.

But Fite wanted to at least make sure his side of the story was heard.

“I hate to tell everybody that. I’m sorry,” Fite said “It wasn’t super exciting. We didn’t have any devious plan in place.”

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