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Daly: Giving them a sales pitch
Special to Page 2Chuck Daly won two NBA titles as coach of the Detroit Pistons and led the original Dream Team to a gold medal in the 1992 Olympics. He talked with ESPN.com's Greg Garber about how coaching has changed in professional basketball:
|  | | Chuck Daly led the Pistons to back-to-back NBA titles in 1989-90. |
Like so many guys, I came to coaching as a player, at St. Bonaventure and Bloomsburg (Pa.) State College.
The most important lesson I ever learned was early on, my first year of college coaching. It was 1964 at Duke, and all the assistants had to rotate and teach this class on coaching theory. Anyway, I was up there one day talking about being tough inside the lines and screaming and hollering and letting the players know who the boss was, and then I said, "Once you step outside the lines, everything goes back to normal."
Well, a football player raised his hand and said, "No, that can't be true. You can't be two different people." And I said, "Whoa." That's when the light went on for me. Finding out who you really are is the most important thing. As a coach, you learn all you can about your players -- what motivates them, who they're close to, all those things -- but you can't be two people. You have to be true to yourself.
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The Daly file |
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Chuck Daly coached the Pistons from 1983-92 and made the playoffs every season. His Pistons won back-to-back NBA titles in 1989 and 1990. Daly also coached the first Olympic Dream Team in 1992, guiding Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird to a gold medal in Barcelona.
He began his NBA career as an assistant for the Philadelphia 76ers in 1978 and eventually became the head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, followed by stints in Detroit, New Jersey and Orlando. Today, Daly is a special consultant for the Grizzlies. |
It's hard to talk about your methods, but I think Isiah Thomas put it best when he was recently inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. I was his sponsor, and he said something to the effect that I kinda let them think it was their thought process all the time. I was really directing him to where I wanted the team to go. It takes a special personality. You've gotta be willing to give of yourself. Early on, at the high school and college levels, it's a tougher thing to understand. But at some point you realize it's not about you, it's about them. They are the people out there playing, not you.
It got harder as the years went on. It was never easy, but I think what's happened in basketball is that you've got the posses, three or four guys around each player. I guess they all do various things for the guys, but it was hard for me to distinguish just what they did. And you get one posse saying to their guy, "Look what he did for the other player. He's not treating you right." And then you have the other posse saying the opposite. The more money there is, the more people there are around the player, the more obstacles there are.
That said, I still think there are players and teams that want to win. The team that smells a championship is easier to coach, because if they believe they have an opportunity to get there, they'll accept more discipline and work. Look, you are basically a salesman of the first order. Your ideas, your philosophies ... you're trying to convince them to be better, train more, work harder. You sell, sell, sell, all day long. Some guys buy into it more than others.
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