Man Who Made Michael Jordan's "Flu Game" Pizza Finally Speaks Out
Much has been said about game five of the 1997 NBA Finals, more widely known as Michael Jordan's "Flu Game," in which he logged 38 points, seven rebounds, five assists, three steals, and one block to propel the Chicago Bulls to a 90 to 88 victory over the Utah Jazz. In the final episode of The Last Dance, Jordan discussed the iconic outing and his flu-like symptoms, suggesting he was a victim of food poisoning from a pizza he ate the night before.
Since the airing of The Last Dance, the man who made the pizza in question has come forward to shed light on the topic. Craig Fite, an assistant manager at a Pizza Hut in Park City, Utah, recently called in to The Big Show on 1280 The Zone in Salt Lake City to rebuff the food poisoning theory.
Fite began be disclosing that he was a big fan of Jordan and the Bulls, so much so that he wanted to make the pizza himself and deliver it to the team's hotel. As the story goes, five guys delivered the pizza to Jordan, although Fite insists it was just him and another part time employee.
"The crap story the guy said, that there was five people, there was two of us -- and I didn't even have that many people working at the time at the store -- but there was two of us," Fite said. "I followed all the rules. At the time I was trying to impress the store manager there. I remember saying this: 'I will make the pizza, because I don't want any of you doing anything to it.' And then I told the driver, you're going to take me there."
As for the pizza, he said it was a thin crust pepperoni pizza. "It's tough to get food poisoning off a pizza unless of course you add something to it, but that didn't happen because sure as heck it didn't leave my hands," he went on to add.
To this day, Fite insists Jordan must have been feeling under the weather due to other reasons. You can hear his firsthand account of the "Flu Game" pizza by pressing play below.