The news is breaking this morning that former Pistons Coach Chuck Daly has died at 78. Daly won back to back NBA Championships with the Pistons, was an Olympic Gold medalist as Coach of the original ‘Dream Team’ in 1992, and he was considered amongst his peers in the NBA as a great friend and one of the greatest basketball minds and managers of all time.
It is a sad day for not only Pistons fans, but for NBA and basketball fans worldwide. Daly lost his battle with pancreatic cancer early this morning, which he was undergoing treatment for.
“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.”
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.
Daly’s Piston teams were known by all fans as the “Detroit Bad Boys” for their workmanlike attitude and physical play. They went after it. No player on a Daly team dogged it out there because he was a master motivator. He had many challenges throughout his career at blending personalities that most coaches would not envy. Players such as Dennis Rodman, Rick Mahorn, Bill Laimbeer, Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars and more…
On the first ever Dream Team he had to manage ego’s of the greatest players of all time on one team, with Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Clyde Drexler, etc. He did this seamlessly with the Dream Team dominating from start to finish with a Team Chemistry among the players that was one of the best we’ve seen to date with Team USA.
Chuck will be missed. But I’m sure he is resting in peace, who knows maybe he is Coaching a game right now…
R.I.P. Chuck Daly – 1930-2009
(source: NBA.com)
