DALLAS (AP) -Chuck Daly knew about those pins with his initials that many coaches and broadcasters are wearing this postseason, which they have dedicated to the Hall of Fame coach.
“It was great. He was deeply moved by it,” said Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle, the president of the coaches’ association and a former Daly assistant who recently spoke to the coach.
Those `CD’ pins aren’t the only way coaches will honor Daly, who died Saturday after a bout with pancreatic cancer.
The National Basketball Coaches’ Association this spring established the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement, which will be given annually to a head or assistant coach who has made significant contributions to the game.
Carlisle said the award would be “sort of symbolic of the things Chuck has done over a long period of time.”
There was a moment of silence for Daly before the start of Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinals between the Mavericks and Denver Nuggets.
how much all of us, especially me, will miss Chuck.”
Daly led the Dream Team to the Olympic gold medal in 1992 after winning back-to-back NBA championships in Detroit, the first coach to win both the NBA and Olympic titles. He 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. His teams made the playoffs in 12 of his 13 seasons.
“Back in the ’80s, if anybody would’ve said that some guy would come along and convince the basketball world that defense was the pathway to winning championships, there would’ve been a lot of second guessers,” Carlisle said. “His Detroit team redefined basketball at that time. … He was a great, great basketball man.”
Carlisle was a young assistant coach on Daly’s staff in New Jersey for two seasons (1992-94). He called Daly an important friend and the single biggest influence on his coaching career.
“Chuck was a man’s man, all the way. He was a great friend to all coaches, extremely generous,” Carlisle said. “There are very few people that have had such great impact on the game and had such humility. He was one of basketball’s truly humble geniuses.”
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