Another funky wrinkle has surfaced in the wake of the last two episodes of “The Last Dance,” in which Michael Jordan claims “The Flu Game” was actually caused by food poisoning from eating an entire pizza before Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals.
A Utah resident by the name of Otto told “The Rich Eisen Show” on Tuesday that the pizza delivered to Jordan's room was actually from a local bar in Park City, Utah — not Pizza Hut, as a former assistant manager of the restaurant chain previously stated.
Transcript via Caitlyn Holroyd of The Score:
“It wasn't Pizza Hut because Pizza Hut would have been closed,” said Otto. “During ‘The Last Dance' they said it was late night, nothing was open. Pizza Hut's closed early, everything closes early in Park City in '97, especially in the summer.”
Michael Jordan's personal trainer, Tim Grover, said in the docuseries that no place was open that late at night. It would make sense that a corporate chain like Pizza Hut would have its doors closed by then.
Otto said he was the head chef at a sushi restaurant nearby the hotel where the Chicago Bulls stayed at the time, noting the pizza came from a bar that is no longer in operation:
“I have a friend who's a bartender there, Chris, and he's told the story from Day 1 that late at night they got a call. The owner of La Coda delivered the pizza himself,” said Otto. “I don't know if it was two, three, four, five people — I just know the owner of the restaurant went up there that night, late night with the pizza run. And the night before, or two nights before, they brought $3,000 worth of alcohol up (to) the room on a bell cart for those guys.”
The former Pizza Hut employee, Craig Fite, told radio station 1280 The Zone's “The Big Show” that he made and delivered the pizza to Michael Jordan himself — all while refuting it was his pizza that gave him food poisoning. Otto countered that revelation:
“(Fite) might have delivered a pizza on another night, but Pizza Hut would've been closed … '97 in the summertime here, everything closes early,” he said.
So who delivered the pizza? We might never know with no record of electronic transactions 23 years ago. Otto's story does seem to add up, however, even if he's not taking any credit whatsoever for delivering the pizza to the GOAT of eating pizza and balling out the next day.
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