DALY DEPARTS AS A COACH IN THE CLASSIC STYLE

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1994/05/29/daly-departs-as-a-coach-in-the-classic-style/94a7f853-ed8d-4718-98f4-8d14d1991ac9/

By JOHNETTE HOWARD

May 29, 1994

Turn out the lights, lock up the gym. When New Jersey Nets coach Chuck Daly bowed out this week, the NBA coaching ranks didn't lose just a good man. Out with him went a coaching archetype. He's the last of the basketball Lifers, a throwback to whistle-blowing, rung-climbing guys who were in basketball before anyone dreamed it would become billion-dollars big, and teams would travel exclusively by charter flights, and seven-figure salaries would be met with a blink and a yawn.

Long before all that or even the advent of the 24-second clock, Daly was simply in love with basketball for basketball's sake. During his championship run in Detroit he dusted off two classics -- team defense and the screen-and-roll -- and rode them all the way to championships. He saw no shame in taking jobs other coaches pursed their lips at. "I got to work, I've got to be near the action," he's always said.

Even long after he seemed to tire of the NBA -- the 5 a.m. wake-up calls and shuttle bus rides from airport to hotel to arena and back again -- the action kept Daly coming back for more. He never had a glittery college or pro playing career to grease his path into the coaching profession. Big-time success came incredibly late in his hopscotching career. As he said in a typically self-effacing retirement speech from the Nets on Thursday, he considers himself just a "small-town guy who got lucky" and "a journeyman who was fortunate to have some good players come along."

He was more than that, of course. He was a winner. An original. A master psychologist with a deserved reputation for handling difficult players. He's also an unabashed clotheshorse -- a trait Daly has always traced to his dad, a traveling salesman who had a fondness for sharp-creased trousers and snap-brim fedoras. But it's doubtful Daly's dad ever coaxed a hotel night manager into taking him up to the presidential suite after closing the lobby bar so she could take Polaroids for him.

Of the room-size walk-in closet in the suite.

So Daly could build a facsimile in his new dream home.

Daly likes to wisecrack that even now he merits only second billing in his home town of Punxsutawney, Pa., behind the famous weather-predicting groundhog. Little-known fact is, if Daly sees his own shadow on Feb. 2, it entitles him to six more weeks of haute couture shopping.

Little-known fact No. 2: Despite his humble start as a local prep coach in Punxsutawney, Daly's basketball pedigree is no joke. As a young coach he used to drive to clinics to hear Adolph Rupp or Clair Bee talk. As a college assistant he served an apprenticeship under Frank McGuire. Like all three coaching legends, Daly ended up reaping huge success and landing in the basketball Hall of Fame. But his career had this crucial difference:

Daly was nearly 60 years old when destiny finally kissed him on the lips. He'd already been on the bench 33 years before he won his first championship as a head coach with the Pistons in 1989.

The long wait probably explains why Daly has always handled success with such class, and why he could never shake the oft-comical sense of fatalism for which he's famous.

With Daly, barnstorming the NBA with the Pistons of the late 1980s was always fun. His Bad Boy teams were hated far and wide. After particularly tough losses, Daly was famous for shambling into a 10 a.m. workout after a sleepless night and announcing things like, "Practice today will last just long enough to throw up."

He also liked to joke that handling so many prickly egos and -- let's face it -- so many unredeemable goofs wasn't really that hard if you understand the overriding reality Daly had divined about coaching NBA players: They weren't just athletes. "They're 12 multimillion-dollar corporations, and each one has his own PR firm," Daly would wryly say.

His motto became "Never trust happiness."

Even in triumph, Daly always seemed to encounter a catch. In 1989, his Pistons won their first NBA title despite a starting center who had not a single post-up move (Bill Laimbeer), a starting power forward who couldn't score (Rick Mahorn) and a starting small forward who'd been derided as a head case (histrionic Mark Aguirre). The next season, with Mahorn gone, the team repeated as champions and won 63 games.

Both seasons, someone else won coach of the year honors.

Anyone see a pattern yet?

"Yeah. Second banana," Daly used to groan.

By his own count, Daly figures he coached 1,475 games in his 39 seasons. But those Detroit years and the Olympic gold medal with the 1992 Dream Team are what he'll be remembered for years from now. Not the Cleveland stint. Not this last go-round with a Nets team that's been gutted the past two seasons by some brain-locked management decisions.

Yet Daly still coaxed 47 wins out of the Nets. Like the Pistons players who hired a chartered plane to be with Daly at his Hall of Fame induction ceremony earlier this month, some Nets appreciated what they had. Blossoming point guard Kenny Anderson, sensing Daly's frustration during the Nets' first-round playoff loss, implored Daly to "just give me one more year." But Daly had had enough.

Now he'll do some weekly TV color work for the TBS game of the week, handle some broadcasting chores for the Nets. But if you run into him on the street or courtside at a Bullets game, let him know you're on to him, that he might be a small-town guy, but luck had nothing to do with the heights he's hit.

After all those years around big egos and million-dollar players you'd think Daly would have learned how to be his own PR firm by now. He's made his own millions a couple of times over. But when he called it quits Thursday you got the feeling what he really couldn't do without was something else.

Those 1,475 games in the bank.