Craig Fite: “It was towards the evening that we got a call. Everybody up in Park City was aware of where the Bulls were. They had already been up there for 3 or 4 days, so when you’re working up there in the restaurant business you obviously know what’s going, and when something big like that is going on, and know where they are at. The guy motioned me over because he knew I was the only Bulls fan in the store… He comes over and he goes ‘I think it’s the Bulls and it might be one of the players.’ I had been hired 3 or 4 weeks earlier as an assistant manager and I remember saying ‘I’m doing it, I will make the pizza because I don’t want anyone of you doing anything to it.’ It was a large thin and crispy, extra pepperoni pizza. I went ahead and made the pizza and was geeking out making sure it didn’t puff up, and made sure it was good pizza if it was for Michael. I had no idea it was for Michael but you have some idea it’s for someone up there… The crap story that the guy said that there were ‘5 people’, there were 2 of us and I didn’t even have that many people working at time. I remember there being a police car parked there and you had to identify yourself. Both of us were in uniform and it’s clear where were coming from. We walk in, security guy looks at us and says ‘great, go on ahead’…The pizza has never left me and has been around me the whole time. As soon as you walked into the building you could already smell the cigar smoke… I knock on the door and this great guy who has been saying all this crap lately barely opens up the door, and looks out. As soon as that door opened it felt like you got punched in the face with cigar smoke. I say ‘hey’ and identified the company I was with and said ‘here is the pizza.’ The pizza costed like 15 bucks, and he opens up the door a little and gives me a 20 and made a gesture for me to keep the change… I said ‘hey, can I say hi to mike?’ And the door opens up a little bit more and Mike is sitting in the room in a chair playing cards and raises his hand and says ‘thanks man!’…Of course, Bob Costas later comes up and says he got food poisoning from pizza or whatever, and I said some colorful words… It’s tough to get food poisoning off a pizza unless of course you obviously add something to it, but that didn’t happen because it sure as heck didn’t leave my hands… That pizza was made well, I followed all the rules, and heck, I was so busy trying to impress to become the store manager there that I followed all the rules.” (Full Segment Above)
A man by the name of Craig Fite has come forward claiming to be the individual who made and delivered the now-infamous pizza that Michael Jordan ate the night before Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals.
The notorious sequence of events is now nicknamed the Jordan ‘Flu Game’. Always a major footnote in the legendary career of Jordan, a sickly and incapacitated Jordan was experiencing severe flu-like symptoms the day of the game, June 11th 1997, as the Bulls and Jazz played the monumental deciding game 5 in a series that was tied 2-2.
Jordan battled through extreme malaise and fever to finish the game with 38 points, 7 rebounds, 5 assists, 3 steals, and one block, in a game where teammates had to help him off the court and to the bench during every TV timeout, where a drained MJ would then remain slumped and emotionless trying to cipher enough energy to continue.
During the final episode of ESPN’s ‘The Dance Documentary’, Jordan’s longtime trainer Tim Grover revealed that Jordan’s condition was not the flu, but actually a bad case of food poisoning that he had gotten from eating delivery pizza the night before.
Grover memorably said that five individuals came to the room of Jordan to deliver the pizza, a detail in the story that raised a lot of questions into the pizza potentially having been compromised by local employees who knew Jordan was going for the series lead against their hometown Jazz the next night.
Our mystery man Craig Fite refutes Grover’s story of there being 5 people Jordan's that night, saying security was present at the hotel, and inspected him and his driver in the lobby, who were both wearing Pizza Hut apparel, before letting the two men up to Jordan's room.
Fite says he could smell the cigar smoke the moment he entered the hotel, and says when Grover first went to the door after they knocked, the cloud of cigar smoke nearly choked him.
After Grover paid Fite, Fite says he asked Grover if he could say hi to some of the players inside the room. Fite says Grover then opened the door halfway and Fite claims he saw Jordan sitting at a table playing cards and yelled over to Fife ‘thanks man!’.
Fite says he took all the necessary precautions to make sure the pizza wasn’t messed with at the store, jokingly saying that he wanted to prepare the pizza himself because he was the only employee at that particular Pizza Hut franchise who was actually a big Jordan fan.
Check out another interview below that Fite had during ‘The Big Show’ with Jake Scott and Gordon Monson to see if you think Fite’s story is legitimate. As of Tuesday morning, there hasn’t been any other corroborating evidence confirming or debunking the man recalling the story that is almost 23 years old.