Goodbye Daddy Rich

NBA basketball junkies will remember the late 80’s as the Bad Boys era. Mention Detroit Pistons and players like Joe Dumars, Dennis Rodman, Rick Mahorn, Vinnie Johnson, Isiah Thomas and Bill Laimbeer materializes. This collection of talent with diverse personalities made numerous enemies, both foreign and domestic, while at the same time winning titles. One man, very much responsible for this bunch, was however, generally admired and respected for his coaching genius and classic elegance.

Charles Jerome “Chuck” Daly was famous for his knack of creating harmony out of this kind of persons. Consider his handling of the 1992 US Olympic Basketball Team, the REAL Dream Team. That team was loaded with superstars with egos bigger than the Olympics itself. Hello Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing, Scottie Pippen, John Stockton, David Robinson and Chris Mullin.

Using a different lineup every game, he led the US to the gold medal, averaging a winning margin of 43 points, without ever calling a single timeout during the tournament. Weeks before the Olympics, Daly directed a group of college players to victory against the NBA stars in a practice game which led him to declare, “I was the happiest man in the gym.”

Voted as one of the ten greatest coaches of the NBA’s first 50 years in 1996, two years after he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame, Daly was also the first coach to win both the NBA and the Olympic title.

Born on July 20, 1930 in Pennsylvania to a small-town, traveling salesman, Daly hoped to find a $10,000 a year job as a high school coach and teacher. Eventually, he got to coach college ball from 1969 to 1977. In 1978, he started coaching in the NBA as assistant to Billy Cunningham at Philadelphia. In 1981, he was hired as Cleveland’s head coach but was fired midway of the season after posting a 9-32 start. He came back to Philadelphia as a broadcaster until Detroit hired him for the head coaching chores in 1983.

Making the right moves for the Pistons who never had winning seasons, Daly introduced a hard-nosed defensive game that borders on plain riot, letting it known to everyone that championships can be won with strong and tough defense. He molded into a team a fiery mix of egos, talent and notoriety and convinced them to play as a cohesive unit. They responded. For nine straight seasons, he took Detroit to the playoffs, ended Boston’s 80’s run, checked MJ and the Bulls, then climaxed it with the back to back titles of 1989 and 1990. Daly was one of seven NBA coaches who have won it.

He left Detroit after the ’91-’92 season for New Jersey until 1994 where he guided them to the playoffs during his two-year stint. He retired after that but the lure of coaching unretired Daly in 1997 when he signed up with Orlando before permanently retiring at the end of the ’98-’99 season at the age of 68 as he was getting weary of traveling. The following year, he joined the Vancouver Grizzlies as a senior adviser.

Did you notice those pins with the initials “CD” that coaches and broadcasters have been wearing this postseason? The National Basketball Coaches Association, headed by Rick Carlisle, created that pin as a tribute to Daly, dedicating the 2009 playoffs to him. The association also established the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award to be given annually to a head or assistant coach who made significant contributions to the game.

John Salley, a member of the Bad Boys era, gave Daly the nickname “Daddy Rich” for his elegantly tailored Armani suits and perfectly done hair. In 1997, the Pistons retired number 2, in honor of his two NBA titles.

Diagnosed of pancreatic cancer just March of this year, Chuck Daly died May 9, 2009 at the age of 78. Another Chuck, this time Charles Wade Barkley, once said, “I never understood how a great man and a nice guy coached the Bad Boys.” Well, as the song goes, at the end of the storm there’s a golden sky.

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