RIP: Chuck Daly

I attended a talk he gave at some service club right after he got hired. He answered every question, including all forms of Punxsatawney, with a mixture of style and grace. I suspect he rarely left a room without making a bunch of fans.

 

Daly coached the Punxsy Chucks for eight years as well. You won't find too many famous coaches/athletes in D9 country, that's for sure.

RIP.

 

I hated the style of basketball he coached, but so what: it wasn't his job to be aesthetically pleasing, it was his job to win.

He knew he didn't have a Larry Bird, Magic Johnson or a Michael Jordan, and he knew he wasn't likely to get one. He had to figure out a way to win with the players he did have (or could get), and his solution was to beat the crap out of everybody to the absolute limit allowed by the rules (and beyond).

When Bird and then Magic hit the downhill slide of their careers, and Jordan hadn't reached his full development yet, he was able to grab a couple of titles while the window was open.

There's an incredible myth about the Bad Boys that they were unselfish, disciplined and able to subjugate their egos. LMAO; that was true of exactly one of them, Joe Dumars. The rest of the players were all pretty much as egotistical and selfish as Dominque Wilkins or Latrell Sprewell ever were. Daly was simply smart enough to run his team in a way so as not to clash with those egos.

To talk to personally, or with people in the media, Daly was great. A lot of fun; he wouldn't tell you everything you wanted to know, but he'd tell you enough. No coach can tell the media the truth all the time, but Daly never went out of his way to lie the way a lot of douchebag coaches do.

 

Loved the grit of Daly's power-packed teams.
That was a talented group that got superior guidance.
Adrian Dantley was even in the mix during 1987-88's advance to the Finals.
The Dumars and the Microwave, Zeke, the squad's post-heaviness, young-and-still-God-fearing Rodman ... it was a talented group.

I loved Daly's tough demeanor, too.
RIP, Coach.

 

I would argue that those Pistons teams in the late 1980s were better than any of the Michael Jordan Bulls teams.

RIP Chuck.

 

I don't think I'd go that far Mizzou. The Pistons of 1991 weren't as good as their title team the year before because of some injuries, but were pretty close and got dismantled, by a team that probably wasn't the best Bulls team. If Magic and Scott aren't hurt, I don't think the Pistons win their first title (of course the same could be said for the Pistons with Isiah getting hurt in 1988; they easily could have derailed LA's repeat).

The weird thing with Daly is that his first Pistons teams were offensive juggernauts, the Kelly Tripucka Era.
117 points per game in 1984. 116 in 1985. 114 in 1986. Even the first title team averaged 106, which in today's NBA is the equivalent of 120. It's a sign of the way the pace has slowed in the league in the last 20 years. They were a great defensive team and gave up 100 points per game in 1989.

 

Sirs, Madames,

I liked the Bob Ryan treatment of CD's passing. Some might think there's a little too much of the author in there but I think a nice balance was struck.

http://www.boston.com/sports/basketball/articles/2009/05/10/unique_path_was_tailored_to_fit_daly/

o-<

 

And they played in the NBA's highest scoring game against Denver.

 

Yep, awesome boxsore. Isiah 47 points and 17 assists. John Long 41 points and 8 assists. Alex English, 47 points, 12 rebounds and seven assists. Vandeweghe, 51, 9 and 8.

But the most amazing stat, I think: There were 2 3-pointers made in the whole game. The increase in 3-point shooting in the last 15 years has been pretty astounding. There were only four 3-point attempts in this game.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=neel/051213

 

That was damn good, I thought.

 

Guys back in the day could take a shot, AND MAKE IT. The same can't be said for the present lot of "players."

 

Can't wait until The Sports Dipshit weighs in. : :

Basically, Jack McCloskey and Daly took a hard cold look at their team, and realized they were never going to beat the meatgrinder Celtics shooting jump shots, so they got rid of Tripucka for Dantley, the league's last 6-3 low-post player, and kicked the thug-it-up defensive philosophy into overdrive.