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Entry #3 - Boston Deli, Salt Lake City
by Matt Bonner

Let's play some word association. I asked some of my teammates the first word or phrase that comes to mind when I say "Salt Lake City". Here are some of the responses I got:

Dejuan Blair and Tim Duncan: "Utah."

Keith Bogans: "The Mormon Church."

Manu Ginobili: "Mountains."

Brent Barry: "No Surfing." (Brent didn’t actually say this)

Richard Jefferson: "Open Space."

Matt Bonner: "Great Sandwiches."

When you think about Salt Lake City, you might picture mountains, skiing, the Utah Jazz, Mormon churches, and snow. But I picture all the great sandwich shops in town. It's amazing. Options galore. Everywhere you look is a different spot. A possibility. A chance to find the great American sandwich.

It's game day, and I leave the hotel at around noon to get lunch. As I walked through the streets of downtown Salt Lake City, I had no clue which sandwich shop I would eat at. I planned to just wander around and stop at whichever shop "felt" right. Well that "feeling" found me within the first couple blocks of my journey. I was walking past a place called, "Boston Deli." I noticed that our assistant coach, Brett Brown, was about to enter that very shop. I also noticed he was wearing a Boston University hat, a tribute to his alma mater (my sister also graduated from BU... Go Terriers!). Then I saw my reflection in the storefront window. I was wearing my usual Boston Red Sox hat and old school New Balance 574s (see P.S. below). That's when it hit me. Brett Brown and Matt Bonner: two New Englanders with numerous ties to Boston, wearing Boston hats, eating at "Boston Deli" in Salt Lake City... It was destiny.

We walked in and had a laugh about the irony of the situation. What were the odds of such an occurrence? Flip it around for a second. That would be like a "Salt Lake City Deli" existing in Boston and two people from Utah eating there together. Quite random.