The man who said he made and delivered a pizza to Michael Jordan ahead of “The Flu Game” has finally dished his thoughts on what really happened.
During “The Last Dance,” Jordan recounted the story of how he allegedly suffered flu-like symptoms the night before an NBA Finals game with the Utah Jazz in 1997. Jordan scored 38 points to help the Bulls win the game.
Jordan said on “The Last Dance” that he and his training staff ordered a pizza while in Park City before the Finals game. The team became suspicious when five people showed up to deliver the pizza. But Jordan said he ate the whole pizza. He said he ended up getting sick right after.
“I ate the pizza,” Jordan said. “All by myself. Nobody else ate the pizza. I wake up about 2:30 a.m. throwing up left and right. ... It really wasn’t the flu game. It was food poisoning.”
Craig Fite — who was a Chicago Bulls fan living in Salt Lake City in 1997 — said in a recent radio interview with ”The Big Show” on 1280 The Zone in Salt Lake City that he brought Jordan the infamous pizza.
Fite, who had became manager of a Pizza Hut in 1997, said the store received an order for Jordan’s pizza. So he decided to make it and deliver it himself — something that went against his normal job responsibilities.
“I remember saying this: ‘I will make the pizza, because I don’t want any of you doing anything to it,’” he said. “And then I told the driver, ‘You’re going to take me there. And it’ll be my first delivery.’”
Fite, who named his son after Jordan, made the pizza perfectly, he said.
“I followed all the rules,” Fite said. “At the time I was trying to impress the store manager there.”
Fite said he felt like he had been “punched in the face with cigar smoke” when he reached Jordan’s floor of the hotel. He said he saw Jordan when he handed over the pizza.
He said there weren’t five guys delivering the pizza, either.
“That’s a bunch of crap,” Fite said. “Sorry, we were five creepy looking guys that the guy felt threatened? I guess you have to sell your book but it really wasn’t that exciting.
“There were two of us. I didn’t even have that many people working (at the Pizza Hut).”
And he doesn’t think the pizza gave Jordan food poisoning, either.
“Did you get it diagnosed? Did you go to the doctor? All this is innuendo on their part,” Fite said. “One thing I remind everybody is, he was smoking so many cigars. They had windows open. He didn’t have a shirt on or he was in a tank top. At around 3 or 4 o’clock in the afternoon in Park City, the sun is gone behind that mountain so it gets colder up there.”
Fite’s comments bring into question some of the aspects of the Jordan documentary. Horace Grant, a former teammate of Jordan’s, told Kap and Co. on ESPN 1000 in Chicago on Tuesday that the documentary is full of lies.
Specifically, Grant referenced Jordan saying Grant spilled locker room secrets to journalists during the Chicago Bulls run, according to ESPN.
“Lie, lie, lie. ... If MJ had a grudge with me, let’s settle this like men,” Grant said during the interview. “Let’s talk about it. Or we can settle it another way. But yet and still, he goes out and puts this lie out that I was the source behind (the book). Sam and I have always been great friends. We’re still great friends. But the sanctity of that locker room, I would never put anything personal out there. The mere fact that Sam Smith was an investigative reporter. That he had to have two sources, two, to write a book, I guess. Why would MJ just point me out?
“It’s only a grudge, man. I’m telling you, it was only a grudge. And I think he proved that during this so-called documentary. When if you say something about him, he’s going to cut you off, he’s going to try to destroy your character.”
Such descriptions of the documentary began before it aired. Utah Jazz legend John Stockton wasn’t a fan of the project, “The Last Dance” director Jason Hehir told “The Dan Patrick Show.” In fact, Stockton was reluctant to appear.
“I finally got (Stockton) on the phone after like two years of chasing him,” Hehir said. “(Stockton) said, ‘I don’t want to be a part of a Michael Jordan puff piece.’”