Chuck Daly, former head basketball coach of the Detroit Pistons and head coach of the 1992 USA Olympic Basketball team died early Saturday morning...Daly was 78-years-old...Before hitting it big with the Pistons, Daly had a humble start in coaching...he was a high school basketball coach for seven years at Punxsutawney High School in Pennsylvania before becoming an assistant coach at Duke University...Daly got his first head coaching gig when he took over at Boston College...in 1971 he left BC for the head coaching job at Penn...he led
the Quakers to four Ivy League titles and four consecutive 20 win seasons...In 1978 Daly moved to the NBA as an assistant coach with the Philadelphia 76ers...his first NBA head coaching position came in the middle of the 1981-82 season when the coached the lowly Cleveland Cavaliers to a 9-32 mark...he was fired after the season and rejoined the 76ers as a radio broadcaster...
In 1983 the Pistons gave Daly a second shot at an NBA job...in nine seasons with Detroit, Daly led the Pistons to three NBA Finals, winning back-to-back titles in 1989 and 1990...the Pistons were known as the Bad Boys with their lockdown, jaw-rattling defense...
In 1992 he coached the original Dream Team as the U.S. marched to a gold medal at the Barcelona Olympics...after leaving Detroit, Daly coach for two years at New Jersey and another two years at Orlando before retiring at the end of the 1999 season...
Below are two articles about Daly...
Krista Jahnke of the Detroit Free Press writes about the death of former Pistons head coach Chuck Daly... "Chuck Daly, the Detroit Pistons coach who led the Bad Boys to the back-to-back NBA titles and was nicknamed Daddy Rich for his snappy dressing style, died this morning." ...
Ken Shouler of the Basketball Encyclopedia wrote this tribute about Daly on ESPN.com... "He knew the league's rhythm was upbeat, as NBA teams topped 110 points per game. He also realized that teams shrank the court come playoff time and made half-court skirmishes the norm. "If you have to play that way in the playoffs, why not just do it in the regular season?" he wondered. "Why play one style for 82 games, then change it all around for the playoffs?" ...
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