Deep Bench Chronicles

I’ve spent a long time working on this. New story: Utah Jazz 1997–98: The Other Side of The Last Dance (Part 1): deepbenchchronicles.com/2026/04/12/uta… Locker-room tensions, injuries, strange incidents, and the turbulent road to the 1998 NBA Finals.

I must have rewound this play a hundred times on my Below the Rim VHS

@NuggetsLead Worst idea

According to Bobby Marks, there is a chance that LeBron James signs the veteran minimum the offseason MAKE IT HAPPEN

This is the problem. Not just the flop itself, the culture around it. When an elite team wins by mastering the modern whistle, everyone else eventually starts asking why they shouldn’t do the same. I wrote about OKC, SGA, and the danger of imitation here: deepbenchchronicles.com/2026/05/10/the…

What makes Walk’s story interesting is how many lives it contains: Florida star, Suns starter, overseas player, Jewish sports figure, scandal-adjacent name in 1970s Phoenix, then a man rebuilding himself after spinal surgery changed everything.

Today’s Deep Bench portrait: Neal Walk. A little light on a player whose name is still too often tied to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and a coin flip he never controlled. His story was far more complex: Florida dominance, Phoenix, Italy, Israel, and a life that took unexpected turns. 📝 New piece: deepbenchchronicles.com/2026/04/29/nea…

Il est temps de découvrir la deuxième partie de l'article "Le Monstre créé par Bob Cousy". La créature est lâché est elle s'apprête à signer une saison de légende en dominant la NBA comme personne avant elle. run-and-gun.ghost.io/tiny-archibald…

@jasonlevin18 Glad to see I’m not the only one who feels that way!

@DeepBenchNBA Agree w every word.

OKC is a great team. Disciplined, talented, incredibly well-built. But they’re also the hardest teams in the league to watch for me. Every era has its villains. The Thunder have mastered the modern NBA whistle better than anyone, and SGA, as brilliant as he is, embodies that style perfectly. He’ll probably win another MVP, and talent has never been the issue. But the nonstop foul-baiting, exaggerated reactions to minimal contact, and inconsistent whistles make the product exhausting at times. They’re not the only team doing it. But they may be the first to do it this systematically and this unapologetically. And that’s the dangerous part. Success always creates imitation across the league. They simply adapted better than anyone else to Adam Silver’s NBA. Credit to them for that. But with a tighter whistle and more consistent officiating, I’m not convinced they dominate the league the same way.

@YvanMontgury Oui!

@DeepBenchNBA Mikan ? ☝️

R.I.P. José « Piculín » Ortiz 😢

@Habib_Heurdais Bingo! t'y es un phénomène oh

George Mikan ?

Durante la temporada 97-98, la de la famosa canasta de Jordan, los Jazz tuvieron el gran éxito deportivo de volver a alcanzar las finales. Detrás de aquel logro hubo un drama personal. Desde el verano anterior, su entrenador, Jerry Sloan tuvo que enfrentarse a la realidad del cáncer de su mujer. Y eso le cambió profundamente. La historia de lo que supuso para Jerry, narrada en "To the brink" es sobrecogedora. Años después Bobbye Sloan fallecería por la maldita enfermedad. Pero creo que tiene un mensaje de esperanza y de confianza en que si se tiene la suficiente voluntad, el cambio de hábitos es posible. Gracias a @DeepBenchNBA por descubrirme el libro, y por su magnífico trabajo de investigación sobre la historia de los Jazz.

Thanks for taking the time to read the piece, I really appreciate it. Glad it led you to Lewis’ book as well. That whole 97–98 stretch is incredibly rich from a journalism standpoint. You can really feel the “last season of Jordan” atmosphere, and there’s a lot on the Jazz side too. It was a pleasure to dive back into it. Most of the games from those 1998 playoffs are easy to find, and I tried to include as many of them as possible in part 2 of the article through YouTube.

@Valc73554504 merci camarade, bonne lecture!

Petit bonbon du dimanche, le genre d'article que l'on adore.

🆕 New article on Deep Bench Chronicles: If you’ve followed the Orlando Magic this season, you’ve heard Jeff Turner’s voice. From Olympic gold with Team USA to a steady role in Orlando’s rise, a look back at the career of one of the franchise’s longtime voices. deepbenchchronicles.com/2026/05/03/jef…

One of the gutsiest press conference moments. Hall of Famer Paul Westphal, unofficial lookalike of Bill Murray.

It actually gets worse later on. Westphal explains that when Vin Baker’s drinking was getting out of control, he asked the team’s leaders to stop taking him out to clubs. One of them told him they were going to keep doing it anyway. I don’t know if that was Payton, but either way, as the team’s captain and best player, you’re supposed to take care of your guys.

@DeepBenchNBA Not the first I've heard on this behavior. @Becoming_Bryna has mentioned what a jackass he was to her dad when he was Sonics coach.

Paul Westphal’s first meeting with Gary Payton in 1999: two hours late, no apology, not interested. Gary Payton, as classy as ever