Michael Jordan's Flu Game: Unpacking the murky details around the NBA legend

Michael Jordan’s “Flu Game” in the 1997 NBA Finals is legendary – a moment when sheer willpower overcame physical limits. Battling illness, Jordan’s gritty performance led the Chicago Bulls to a crucial victory over the Utah Jazz.

In true folklore tradition, the details around this game have gotten murky over the years, so let's see if we can get to grips with what really happened.

To set the scene, in 1997, Jordan was already considered one the greatest of all time, he had already conquered four rings by then. The Bulls became NBA champions after beating the Seattle Supersonics the year before, in 1996.

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The 96’ Supersonics, with their marquee “Sonic Boom” tandem of Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp both were selected as all-stars and had held off the Jazz in the Western Conference Finals, winning in a very close seven-game series. This prevented the Jazz from reaching their first-ever NBA finals despite very strong seasons from their famous duo of John Stockton and Karl Malone.

In the subsequent offseason between the 95-96’ season and the 96-97’ season, the Utah Jazz made only minor changes to their roster, coach Jerry Sloan was confident he had assembled the right team and the right system to get the Jazz their first-ever NBA title.

Sloan was familiar with the Chicago Bulls, he was nicknamed “The Original Bull” on account of being the first player selected to the team in the 1966-67 expansion draft that created the team. His #4 jersey still hangs in the rafters today in the Bulls’ United Center on account of his two-time NBA all-star and six-time NBA all-defensive team nominations.

Sloan and the Jazz came into the 1996-1997 playoffs on a hot streak, setting a regular season franchise record, going 64-18. The Jazz won their last 23 home games until the “Flu Game”... The Jazz hadn't lost to an Eastern Conference team at home since November 24th, 1995, equalling 565 days!

There are many aspects of this game that gave it great significance. The first of which is, despite being called the “flu game”, Jordan did not actually have the flu.

The “flu game” terminology hails from pregame announcer Marv Albert's reporting in NBC’s pregame broadcast, where he announced Jordan was suffering from “flu-like symptoms”.

In a 2013 interview with ESPN, Jordan’s personal trainer, Tim Grover stated that Jordan was really suffering from food poisoning from a pizza that had been delivered to the Bulls’ hotel late at night before the Game Five contest the next day.

This pizza delivery then became the source of considerable controversy, as Grover claimed to have felt something was off about this pizza delivery. He claimed four or five guys came to the hotel room door, each wanting to see MJ before they gave them the pizza.

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Jordan was the only person to have a slice of pizza on the team, thus it would make sense he’s the only person who came down with any illness afterward. There would be speculation on why Jordan was the only one jeopardized by the illness, despite close interaction with several other Bulls.

NBA folklore kept thousands of fans questioning the real causes behind Jordan's "flu game". After Netflix released The Last Dance, a Utah man named Craig Fite posted on Facebook that he was the pizza man that night, and the story was completely wrong.

Fite, who later cooberated his story to Sports Illustrated, had recently been hired as the assistant manager of a Pizza Hut restaurant in Park City, Utah, a ski town in the mountains about a half hour outside Salt Lake City where the game was being played.

Fite claimed everyone in Park City knew the Bulls were in town, staying at the Marriott hotel. When they received an order from the Marriot, he assumed personal control over the order, as he was a long-time Bulls fan.

He reportedly used all fresh ingredients and expressed his doubts that it was really food poisoning, as later many other pizzas were ordered with the same materials and no food poisoning cases were reported back to the restaurant.

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After assuming control of the order and making it himself, Fite went along for the delivery alongside the regular delivery guy. When Fite and the driver arrived at the hotel, they took the elevator to the room, where Fite described the experience as being "punched in the face with cigar smoke.” 

They arrived at the room, Grover answered the door, and after asking if they could see Michael Jordan, Grover opened the door a bit more so they could see the star player.

Fite recalls seeing the windows completely open behind the shirtless Jordan to allow the cigar smoke to clear out, leading him to hypothesize that the food poisoning was really cold, caught by the cold mountain air blowing in the open windows, exacerbated by the cigar smoke, as Sports Illustrated reported. 

This theory has never been corroborated by anyone else, and the identity of the driver was never mentioned by Fite, however, reports from both METARS and ISD data indicate that even in June, Park City, which would later in 2002 host the Winter Olympics, temperatures could have been as low as 55 degrees Fahrenheit (12.7 Celsius) at midnight.

The rest is history, Jordan led the Bulls in scoring and won the game with a decisive three-pointer in the final stages of the game. 

The Bulls would go on to win game six, back in Chicago, to win their second back-to-back title, and setting the table for Jordan to win his second three-peat the next year in 1998, against the Jazz again.

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