Former Pistons coach Chuck Daly dies at age 78

Terry Foster / The Detroit News

Although weak from chemotherapy treatment, former Pistons coach Chuck Daly never stopped being a coach. Daly grabbed a sheet of paper from his old friend Rollie Massimino and jotted down a play.

It was meant for Villanova coach Jay Wright to use against North Carolina during the Final Four in Detroit. Daly thought the play might work, and he wanted to help out one of the schools from his old Philadelphia days. He asked Massimino to pass it along.

Daly always said he was a lifer in basketball. He came into the world thinking basketball, and he went out that way early Saturday morning when he died from pancreatic cancer in Jupiter, Fla., with his family by his side.

Daly was 78.

It's been a tough period for the Pistons. Longtime scout and Hall of Fame coach Will Robinson died last year and owner Bill Davidson earlier this year. They were all tied into the Bad Boys era. Davidson was the owner, Robinson was offered the job, and Daly took it in 1983 after being hired by General Manager Jack McCloskey.

Daly coached the Bad Boys Pistons to three NBA Finals and NBA titles in 1989 and 1990. He is the Pistons' all-time leader in wins in the regular season (467) and postseason (71). He also coached the 1992 Dream Team to a gold medal in the Summer Olympics and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1994.

Former Piston John Salley nicknamed him "Daddy Rich" because of his dapper suits, full head of hair and ability to make players think they were running the show -- when they actually were doing what Daly wanted.

Dennis Rodman called him "God" and viewed him as a father figure.

"Chuck Daly managed pro athletes better than any coach I know," said his former assistant coach, Brendan Malone. "People say it was easy to coach those old Pistons teams. Well, they weren't there every day. It was very difficult to manage that team, and I'm telling you a lot of coaches would not have succeeded with that group. They were filled with egos, but Chuck knew how to handle them."

From Kane to the Bad Boys

Daly was a gym rat from Kane, Pa., who coached high school basketball at Punxsutawney, Pa., before becoming an assistant at Duke University and a head coach at Boston College and Penn.

He rose to the top of the NBA with an easy style and ability to understand people. He was the ultimate players' coach in a league in which he said it was his task to manage "mini corporations," as he called them.

"I don't look at them as if they made a lot of money," he once said. "I don't care how much money they make or where they come from. You have to take athletes and you have to reach them. And if you don't reach them you lose your job. They are all entirely different."

For example, Daly knew he could not scream at his stars -- Isiah Thomas, Bill Laimbeer and Adrian Dantley. So he took out his frustrations on reserve Salley, who accepted that role during practices.

Daly knew the clock was ticking on patience the minute the preseason began. He estimated that the team had more than 5,000 meetings a season, including timeouts, practices, and pre- and post-game meetings.

He knew his voice sometimes fell on deaf ears. Sometimes he would call a timeout and say nothing.

"In this day and age, they get tired of you quicker," Daly said. "They tune you out in two or three years. In Detroit it lasted nine years. It lasted two years too long. They know the same tune and the same inflections. They get tired of you."

Daly was easygoing but a fierce competitor, a trait his friends saw in him even after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in March. Even on bad days, basketball was top of mind.

"He just lived life to its fullest," said Thomas, Daly's point guard. "I just remember him as being 'Daddy Rich.' Just not too high and not too low. He was always just steady."

This past December, Daly shot an 81 on a Florida golf course. Three months later he was diagnosed with cancer.

Defense first

When Daly became sick, many of his friends rallied around him, including Billy Cunningham and Thomas, who arranged to have him admitted to the famed Sloan-Kettering Cancer Treatment Center in New York. Coaches and NBA people visited him daily, and all NBA coaches paid tribute by wearing a "CD" lapel pin during games.

Daly left the Pistons following the 1991-92 season. Afterward, he coached two seasons each with New Jersey and Orlando, making the playoffs three times.

Daly was one of the elite coaches in the NBA but never acted like it. During a walk on Rush Street in Chicago with Malone, Daly confessed that he did not feel like he was a great strategist.

"I think the reason he felt that way is because he learned from guys like Hubie Brown, Billy Cunningham and coaches he always respected," said Malone, now an assistant with the Orlando Magic. "He always felt he did not match up."

It wasn't unusual for Daly to pass praise to others. He said the Pistons were great because of the leadership of Thomas and the talent of Joe Dumars, Laimbeer and Mark Aguirre. But he said the Pistons became championship caliber when they drafted Dennis Rodman and Salley in 1986.

"I got two years and an option year when I took this job," Daly said. "And I was thinking after that they are going to get my butt out of here. But once we got Salley and Rodman, that changed everything. You had guys willing to defend and rebound who did not need the ball. They changed our destiny."

Thomas said his job as lead guard was to make Daly's playbook come to life. He said Daly allowed him to do his job better because of the rough times both coach and players went through.

Daly talked a lot about mental toughness and taught players how not to crack under pressure.

"He educated us because he had come from Philadelphia and we had all those wars with Boston and the ups and downs," Thomas said. "When he first got here we were an offensive team that ran the ball up and down and scored a lot of points. He slowly transformed us to be one of the best defensive teams to play the game."

Wins and losses

Daly slowly built the Pistons into a feared defense-first unit.

"And let me tell you this was not an easy group to coach," said Ron Rothstein, an assistant under Daly and later head coach of the Pistons. "It was a very talented group, but the personalities and the egos and his ability to make it all come together -- I'm not sure too many coaches could have done this."

As the Pistons' current president, Dumars has a greater appreciation for Daly's leadership skills.

"Players are going to play hard for him," Dumars once said. "He knows how to connect with each player on the roster. He's a no-nonsense guy. As an athlete you want to play for him."

He also kept players on edge.

"He never allowed you to get comfortable," Dumars said. "We'd be on a 10-game winning streak and Chuck would come in and say, 'I'm afraid we're going to lose the next three games.'"

Daly hated losing but dealt with it better than most coaches. During the 1988 NBA Finals, the Pistons were one play from winning their first NBA title. But Kareem Abdul-Jabbar went up for a sky hook and Laimbeer was called for a phantom foul that placed the Los Angeles Lakers center at the free-throw line, where he hit both shots to prevent the Pistons from winning.

Two days later the Lakers won Game 7 in Los Angeles.

Following Game 6, Daly went to dinner with his friend John Ginopolis and his wife Terri Daly, and he gave them a tour of Hollywood in his rental car and appeared cool and calm.

"I mean, it was a devastating loss," Ginopolis said. "I couldn't believe he was so calm. He told me (about Game 6): 'There is nothing I can do about it. It is time to move on.'"