Man who says he made MJ's pizza disputes food poisoning claim

A man from Utah has identified himself as the person who made and delivered the pizza that resulted in Michael Jordan's "Flu Game," and he doesn't buy the story that it gave the Chicago Bulls legend food poisoning.

Jordan and his longtime trainer, Tim Grover, said in the final episodes of "The Last Dance" on Sunday night that Jordan was dealing with food poisoning from delivery pizza in Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals, not the flu. However, former Pizza Hut employee Craig Fite disputed that claim Monday on 1280 The Zone's "The Big Show."

As Fite recalled, he had been hired as an assistant manager at the restaurant about three-to-four weeks before the game. Jordan's order, according to Fite, was a large, thin-and-crispy pizza with extra pepperoni.

"I remember saying this: 'I will make the pizza, 'cause I don't want any of you doing anything to it,'" Fite said. "And then I told the driver, said, 'You're gonna take me there."

Contrary to accounts in "The Last Dance" stating that five people delivered the pizza, Fite said it was just him and the driver who went to the hotel room. Grover took the pizza from Fite and then held the door open so he could say hello to Jordan.

Fite said there were no other reports of customers getting sick that night and called the food poisoning claims a "bunch of crap."

"All this is innuendo on their part, and they're like, 'Of course it was food poisoning,'" 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 or whatever - all the guys were. But as you guys know darn good and well, at around 3-4 o'clock in the afternoon (in) Park City, the sun is gone behind that mountain so it gets colder up there ...

"I don't know what the temperature was, but chances are, he had this, or they could have brought him food from somewhere else if it really was food poisoning. But that pizza was made well. I followed all the rules."