NBA, Olympic coach Chuck Daly dies at 78
By LARRY LAGE, AP Sports Writer
25 minutes ago

Buzz up!1 vote PrintDETROIT (AP)—Chuck Daly, who coached the original Dream Team to the Olympic gold medal in 1992 after winning back-to-back NBA championships with the Detroit Pistons, died at age 78 Saturday morning, the Pistons said.

He was renowned for his ability to create harmony out of diverse personalities at all levels of the game, whether they were Ivy Leaguers at Pennsylvania, Dream Teamers Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, or Pistons as dissimilar as Dennis Rodman and Joe Dumars.

“It’s a players’ league. They allow you to coach them or they don’t,” Daly once said. “Once they stop allowing you to coach, you’re on your way out.”

The Pistons announced in March that the Hall of Fame coach had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was undergoing treatment.

Daly was voted one of the 10 greatest coaches of the NBA’s first half-century in 1996, two years after being inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. He was the first coach to win both an NBA title and Olympic gold.

“I think Chuck understood people as well as basketball,” former Pistons guard Joe Dumars told The Associated Press in 1995. “It’s a people business.”

Daly did famously at the Barcelona Games with NBA superstars such as Magic Johnson, Jordan, Larry Bird and Barkley, using a different lineup in every game.

“I played against Chuck’s teams throughout the NBA for a lot of years. He always had his team prepared, he’s a fine coach,” Bird said shortly after Daly’s diagnosis became public.

“Chuck did a good job of keeping us together,” Bird said. “It wasn’t about who scored the most points, it was about one thing: winning the gold medal.”

Daly humbled the NBA superstars by coaching a group of college players to victory in a controlled scrimmage weeks before the Olympics.

“I was the happiest man in the gym,” Daly said afterward.

Daly also made the right moves for the Pistons, who were notorious for their physical play with Bill Laimbeer and Rick Mahorn leading the fight, Dennis Rodman making headlines and Hall of Fame guards Isiah Thomas and Dumars lifting the team to titles in 1989 and 1990.

Former Piston John Salley gave Daly the nickname Daddy Rich for his impeccably tailored suits.

Daly had a career regular-season record of 638-437 in 13 NBA seasons. In 12 playoff appearances, his teams went 75-51. He left Detroit as the Pistons’ all-time leader in regular-season and playoff victories.

Despite his success, Daly wasn’t part of a Coach of the Year presentation until he handed the trophy to then-Detroit coach Rick Carlisle in 2002.

“This is as close as I’ve ever been to that thing,” Daly said, looking at the Red Auerbach Trophy.

Born July 20, 1930 in St. Mary’s, Pa., Charles Jerome Daly played college ball at St. Bonaventure and Bloomsburg. After two years in the military, he coached for eight seasons at Punxsutawney (Pa.) High School and then spent six years as an assistant at Duke.

Succeeding Bob Cousy as coach at Boston College, Daly coached the Eagles to a 26-24 record over two seasons and then spent seven seasons at Pennsylvania, leading the Quakers to the Ivy League championship in 1972-75.

Daly joined the NBA coaching ranks in 1978 as an assistant under Billy Cunningham in Philadelphia. His first head coaching job was with Cleveland, but he was fired after the Cavaliers went 9-32 over the first half of the 1981-82 season.

In 1983, Daly took over a Detroit team that had never had two straight winning seasons and led the Pistons to nine consecutive winning seasons. He persuaded the likes of Rodman, Thomas, Dumars, Mahorn and Laimbeer and to play as a unit and they responded with back-to-back championships in 1989 and 1990.

Far from being intimidated by the Pistons’ Bad Boys image, Daly saw the upside of it.

“I’ve also had players who did not care,” he said a decade later. “I’d rather have a challenging team.”

After leaving Detroit, Daly took over the New Jersey Nets for two seasons and led them to the playoffs both times.

He left broadcasting to return to the bench 1997 with the Orlando Magic and won 74 games over two seasons, then retired at the age of 68 because he said he was weary of the travel.

Daly joined the Vancouver Grizzlies as a senior adviser in 2000.

In retirement, he split time between residences in Jupiter, Fla., and suburban Detroit.

The Pistons retired No. 2 to honor their former coach’s two NBA titles in January 1997.

“Without you, there wouldn’t be us,” Mahorn said to Daly during the ceremony.

Daly is survived by his wife, Terry, as well as daughter Cydney and grandchildren Sebrina and Connor.

Associated Press writer Jim Irwin in Detroit and AP Sports Writer Cliff Brunt in Indianapolis contributed.

No replies in over 12 hours? One of the greatest coaches of all time, but he never gets the respect from the mainstream. RIP Chuck.

Sorry, I was busy trying to sell my autographed 89 pistons basketball featuring the late Chuck Daly

Daly was ‘deeply moved’ by `CD’ pins
6 hours, 13 minutes ago

DALLAS (AP)—Chuck Daly knew about those pins with his initials that many coaches and broadcasters are wearing this postseason, which they have dedicated to the Hall of Fame coach.

“It was great. He was deeply moved by it,” said Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle, the president of the coaches’ association and a former Daly assistant who recently spoke to the coach.

Those `CD’ pins aren’t the only way coaches will honor Daly, who died Saturday after a bout with pancreatic cancer.

The National Basketball Coaches’ Association this spring established the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement, which will be given annually to a head or assistant coach who has made significant contributions to the game.

Carlisle said the award would be “sort of symbolic of the things Chuck has done over a long period of time.”

There was a moment of silence for Daly before the start of Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinals between the Mavericks and Denver Nuggets.

“The last 6 1/2 months, with the passing of Pete Newell, Bill Davidson and now Chuck Daly, it’s three of basketball’s most humble, iconic guys. Guys who are really basketball royalty,” Carlisle said. “It’s hard to explain how much all of us, especially me, will miss Chuck.”

Daly led the Dream Team to the Olympic gold medal in 1992 after winning back-to-back NBA championships in Detroit, the first coach to win both the NBA and Olympic titles. He was voted one of the 10 greatest coaches of the NBA’s first half-century in 1996, two years after being inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. His teams made the playoffs in 12 of his 13 seasons.

“Back in the ’80s, if anybody would’ve said that some guy would come along and convince the basketball world that defense was the pathway to winning championships, there would’ve been a lot of second guessers,” Carlisle said. “His Detroit team redefined basketball at that time. … He was a great, great basketball man.”

Carlisle was a young assistant coach on Daly’s staff in New Jersey for two seasons (1992-94). He called Daly an important friend and the single biggest influence on his coaching career.

“Chuck was a man’s man, all the way. He was a great friend to all coaches, extremely generous,” Carlisle said. “There are very few people that have had such great impact on the game and had such humility. He was one of basketball’s truly humble geniuses.”

Growing up a Celtics fan, my family hated the Detroit Pistons. With that said, Daly was a great coach and had a great career. It's sad to see him go.

He went to Bloomsburg University, about an hour and a half from here and grew up in Elk County. I love learning about where these guys came from.

Daddy Rich says goodbye
By Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports
May 10, 3:11 pm EDT
May 5, 2009

On the Detroit Pistons’ mid-April trip to Miami, Joe Dumars drove with a carload of old guard franchise employees – the trainer, public relations director and radio voice – to Jupiter, Fla., to visit Chuck Daly. They had a sweet time remembering the glory days of the Bad Boys, but the old coach had been watching Detroit’s games between treatments for pancreatic cancer and wanted to talk all about it. He had so many questions for Dumars, still so much curiosity about the plans and perspective of the Pistons president.

When it was time to leave, Dumars was walking out the door when Daly called him back alone. Daly was gaunt, 50 pounds lighter, and yet those eyes had lost nothing. Daly leaned close to Dumars and whispered, “Always go forward in life.”

Never look back, he told Dumars. Never.

“That was his way,” Dumars said softly on the phone Saturday night, “of saying goodbye.”

Goodbye Daddy Rich. The Bad Boys gave him that nickname for the expensive suits and perfectly coiffed hair, but the irony is that Daly was always substance over style. He was the son of a small-town traveling salesman who told his best friends that he someday hoped he could be a $10,000 a year high school coach and teacher. He made it late, made it big and finally died on Saturday at 78 years old. He is forever the Detroit Pistons coach, a defensive innovator, an original in a profession overrun with cookie-cutter copy cats.



Daly, who won two titles with the Pistons and the Olympic gold medal with the Dream Team in 1992, will be remembered as a man’s man, a coach’s coach. He was funny, self-deprecating and still cracking wise until a merciful end on Saturday morning.

Two weeks ago, Daly was talking to one of his closest friends, Lonnie Cooper, the agent who helped make him a millionaire coach, and told him that the stock market was tanking and he needed a favor.

“Get me a job,” Daly told Cooper. The two of them laughed on the phone, like you always did in Daly’s company.

The beauty of the man was that he never thought he had it made, that he was still always the thirtysomething high school coach in Punxsutawney, Pa., sending out letters to college coaches to get an assistant’s job. Before he got the Pistons job in 1983, he had bad players and a bad record as the Cleveland Cavaliers coach. With the Pistons, he transformed a historically combustible brew of talent and egos and characters – Isiah Thomas and Dennis Rodman, Bill Laimbeer and Rick Mahorn – into two-time NBA champions.


As the coach, he created the Jordan Rules and a hard-edge defensive style that bordered on sheer mayhem. He taught the NBA that you could win championships with defense. “I don’t know who else it could’ve worked with other than Chuck,” Dumars said. “His personality was exactly what was needed for the type of team we had. You couldn’t have been a shrinking violet and coached our team.”

He was never trying to be someone else, never an act and that’s why it worked with the Bad Boys. They would’ve spotted a phony a mile away and chewed him up.

Within him, there were still the scars of a poor childhood and a pro pink slip. They called him the “Prince of Pessimism,” because he always counted on the worst to happen. He’d call Cooper and tell him that they were going to lose that night, and that he’d probably never be able to get another job and it was always Daly’s mechanism to keep himself grounded.

At the news conference to introduce him as the Nets coach, Daly peeked behind the podium curtain and could see cameras and reporters everywhere. All the big-time New York guys were there, all for him. His agent had just made him basketball’s first million dollar a year coach, and yet he grabbed Cooper by the hand and pulled him into a broom closet. The man with two NBA titles, Olympic Dream Team immortality and a ticket to the Basketball Hall of Fame told Cooper, “Do you realize that just a few years ago I was a high school basketball coach making eight thousand dollars a year and sweeping my own gym?”

Then Daly took a deep breath, said, “Let’s go,” and Daly charmed ‘em all over again. We won’t remember him for those final seasons with the Nets and Orlando Magic, but always the Bad Boys. The Pistons ended the Celtics’ 1980s run, held off Michael Jordan’s Bulls and won back to back titles in 1989 and 1990. Every day in the gym with those Pistons was a high-wire act, part X’s and O’s, part psychologist, part peacemaker and part skull-cracker.

Those closest to Daly will tell you that Dumars, the gentleman, had always been his favorite. He was the easiest kid in the class. Once, Daly walked over to Dumars before the start of a practice and said, “Thanks kid.”

That’s all. Just thanks. For what, Dumars asked him. Daly wanted to tell Dumars that he appreciated that with all the characters and drama in Detroit, he never had to worry about him. “Whatever time you feel like you need to use on me, just use it on them,” Dumars told him. They always had that understanding, that they had a bond borne of less is more.

Dumars was on the telephone Saturday, fighting through the ache of it all. In his days as player and president in Detroit, late owner Bill Davidson and Daly had been second fathers to him. They treated Joe D. like family. Those final words stayed with Dumars, resonated and he isn’t sure that he’ll ever go a day without thinking about them.

Always go forward in life, Daddy Rich told his old shooting guard when it was time to say goodbye. Never look back.

What a gift, Dumars thought. What a beautiful, forever gift. Until the end, Chuck Daly was still his coach.