People skills made Chuck Daly a dream to play for

THOSE WHO knew him well will tell you that Chuck Daly probably was as good with X's-and-O's as the next basketball coach. It wasn't his strongest trait, though. What made Daly one of the most revered coaches of his or any era was his uncanny knack for knowing what buttons to push to transform a disparate group of individuals into a cohesive unit.

Daly, who was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Big 5 Hall of Fame in 2001, died of pancreatic cancer Saturday morning in Jupiter, Fla., at the age of 78.

With the exception of a wretched half-season with the Cleveland Cavaliers as a rookie NBA head coach in 1981-82, Daly was a winner everywhere he went. And, although his most notable successes came at the game's highest level, where he guided the Detroit Pistons to back-to-back NBA titles in 1989 and '90 and the original "Dream Team" of NBA superstars to Olympic gold in 1992, he was, in his heart, first and foremost a Philadelphia guy.

Born in St. Mary's, Pa., Daly made his coaching bones at the University of Pennsylvania, where he compiled a 125-38 record (74-10 against Ivy League opponents), with four Ivy titles in his 6-year run from 1971 to '77. He later served as an assistant to Billy Cunningham with the 76ers and as a broadcaster for the team.

It was that Philly resiliency and iron-fist-in-a-velvet-glove approach that enabled Daly to transfer his winning ways from college, where young players are more apt to heed a coach's directives without complaint, to the NBA, where absurdly wealthy veterans with guaranteed contracts can tune out that same coach if they so choose.

"Look, I'm not dealing with just 12 men out there,'' Daly once said of the psychological requirements of coaching in the NBA. "I'm dealing with 12 corporations. Every guy is the head of his own major corporation. The player makes a million a year. Consequently, you're dealing with the president of his own company. Each day. Every day."

Fortunately for Daly, and for the sport he helped elevate, his rare ability to bring all those dribbling, rebounding CEOs together made him as beloved as he was respected.

"I had a good feel or sensitivity toward people," he once said.