Posts Tagged ‘Chuck Daly’

Carlisle Seeks Win No. 500 Tonight At OKC

February 4, 2013  ·  11:09AM

HANG TIME SOUTHWEST – Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle probably never imagined it would take 47 games this season for his team to get 20 wins.

So, naturally, it’s taken a little longer for him to join the exclusive 500-win club. It’s been that type of a hard-coaching season for Carlisle, who will become just the fifth active coach to reach 500 career wins with the Mavs’ next victory. It could happen tonight, although it won’t be easy as Dallas is in Oklahoma City (8 p.m. ET, League Pass) to take on a Thunder team in a bit of a lull after finishing up seven of eight games on the road.

Carlisle has amassed a 499-352 (.586) record in 11 seasons with Detroit, Indiana and Dallas, where he has won 218 games in now his fifth season, the longest tenure of his career. The only active coaches with 500 wins are Gregg Popovich (1,295), George Karl (1,104), Rick Adelman (989) and Doc Rivers (570). Carlisle is one of just four active coaches, along with Popovich, Miami’s Erik Spoelstra and Rivers, to win a championship.

Carlisle will become the 28th coach in NBA history to achieve 500 wins. Only seven coaches have reached 1,000. One is Larry Brown (No. 6 all-time with 1,098 wins), the man who replaced Carlisle a decade ago in Detroit after he led the Pistons to the Eastern Conference finals in just his second season. Brown and the Pistons won the title the next season. Brown now coaches just up the road at SMU.

“I think it’s the only team I ever took over with a winning record and I said immediately when I got the job that the values that he has are no different than the values that I have,” Brown said. “It was an easy transition for me because they were taught the right way. He knows that, we talk about it all the time. I inherited a team that was fundamentally sound, that knew how to play, they cared about their teammates, they guarded every single night, played hard every single night. I coined the phrase, ‘Played the right way,’ and he started that.”

Carlisle emerged as one of the game’s truly gifted coaches with his deft handling of a veteran Mavs team that rolled up the Trail Blazers, Lakers, Thunder and finally the Heat in winning the 2010-11 championship, the franchise’s first.

And who knows how much more quickly Carlisle might have reached 500 if late Pistons owner Bill Davidson had not jumped at the chance to hire the legendary Brown; and then later at Indiana if the “Malice in the Palace” brawl in Detroit had not thrown the franchise into chaos. Still, Carlisle managed to guide that injury- and suspension-riddled 2004-05 Pacers team to the playoffs and a first-round upset of Boston.

He spent one more season at Indiana before taking a year off working as an analyst at ESPN. Then, Donnie Nelson and Mark Cuban brought him to Dallas to coach Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Kidd.

So far this season Dallas is 0-2 against the Thunder. Yet, who would have figured both games would go to overtime?

Perhaps Carlisle has something special up his sleeve to nail down No. 500.

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Re-Living The Dream Team Is Pure Gold

June 13, 2012  ·  6:30AM

Dirk Nowitzki of Germany and Tony Parker of France have been named MVPs of the NBA Finals. Yao Ming of China and Andrea Bargnani of Italy have been the No. 1 pick in the draft. Manu Ginobili of Argentina and Pau Gasol of Spain are perennial All-Stars.

None of it would have been possible without The Dream Team.

They not only won the gold medal as the marquee attraction at the Barcelona Olympics, but also lifted basketball to a place of prominence globally and opened the gates for today’s flood of international stars.

That is the message delivered by the 90-minute documentary debuting Wednesday night on NBA TV (9 p.m. ET) that chronicles the tale of the 11 Hall of Famers – led by Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan – who took the basketball world by storm in 1992.

Along, of course, with confirmation that Charles Barkley is one pretty entertaining fellow.

The film follows the Dream Team from the spark of its origin inside the competitive spirit of Magic, who sold the notion to Bird and a reluctant Jordan, all the way through the poignant victory ceremony following the gold medal clincher over Croatia.

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Posted in London 2012, USA Basketball / Comments (30) /

Would Bad Boys Make Pistons Good?

June 8, 2011  ·  12:20PM

HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – Nothing warms the cockles of a Piston fan’s heart more than the memory of an Isiah Thomas jump-shot dagger or a Bill Laimbeer cheap-shot forearm to the back of a head.

Perhaps nothing would rekindle interest in the team and put fans back into the seats at The Palace than a return to the Bad Boys’ attitude as new owner Tom Gores plans to make the first significant hire of his regime. But how long would the Bad Boys II really go to resurrecting the once-proud franchise?

It’s an interesting debate that’s currently taking place in the Motor City and it has a pair of long-time, well-respected columnists from The Detroit News on opposite sides of the fence.

Terry Foster is in favor if rekindling the old spark with the likes of Isiah or Laimbeer:

This Pistons job will be a tough one because a lot of buffoonery is left behind and can no longer be tolerated. New owner Tom Gores talked about being tougher, and that starts in the dressing room.

Players were allowed to run roughshod over John Kuester. They could do as they pleased and say what they wanted. They didn’t seem to care.

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Heat Good, But They’re No Bad Boys

June 7, 2011  ·  12:33PM

HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – It’s a knee-jerk response. Every time a great defensive team rears its head, so many are quick to jump up and compare them to the Bad Boys of Detroit who ruled the Earth two decades ago.

Such is the case now with the Heat as they’ve limited the Mavericks to just 41.15 percent shooting and 88.3 points a game through the first three games of The Finals.

But seriously, when did you last see Miami’s Joel Anthony trip a player trying to drive down the lane ala Bill Laimbeer and then sneer? When have you seen Udonis Haslem pull the old rocking chair out from under his man and then chuckle like Rick Mahorn when he falls to the floor? When have you seen LeBron James or Dwayne Wade demonstrate even an ounce or two of the seething defensive defiance that Isiah Thomas and Dennis Rodman took out onto the court with them for every game.

Our good friend Ira Winderman of the Sun-Sentinel caught up with a guy who’s had an up-close view of both. Ron Rothstein, now on the Heat bench, was one of the architects of the Bad Boys along with the late great Chuck Daly in Detroit.

Those Detroit defenses Rothstein helped assemble for Chuck Daly’s “Bad Boys” Pistons in the ’80s were more about brawn and bulk, players such as Rick Mahorn and Bill Laimbeer.

This Heat defense is about athleticism, the type of closing speed that can pack the paint and still chase 3-point shooters off their spots.

“We have some athletes on this team that are just off the charts,” Rothstein said. “The amount of ground that we cover, the amount of space that we can cover, getting back in transition and running people down is remarkable.”

This is not to diminish the Heat’s prowess, merely to distinguish it from the rest and give its just due. All of those open 3-point shots that the Mavs hit against the Thunder and Lakers — especially the Lakers — in the previous two rounds of the playoffs are no longer so readily available because the Heat are simply too fast, too quick to recover on defense. That is especially true of James and Wade, who get most of their accolades for the jaw-dropping stunts they perform on offense, but can be just as overwhelming at the other end of the floor. The ball movement and slick passing that is a Dallas trademark has not been able to get enough open looks at the basket for anyone but Dirk Nowitzki and that lack of scoring from the supporting case is what has the Mavs battling uphill.

Make no mistake. The Heat defense is as good as it gets in today’s game. But they’re not the Bad Boys. Not until some bodies hit the floor and we see some sneers.

Admit it, don’t you miss the Bad Boys?

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Posted in 2011 Playoffs / Comments (9) /

Induction Day at the Hall

August 13, 2010  ·  8:22AM

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Posted by Scott Howard-Cooper

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – I think Chuck Daly will be here tonight.

Not actually physically here as part of the Hall of Fame ceremonies, but he will definitely be present a little more than a year after his death, very much a part of the festivities as the original Dream Team he coached to the 1992 Olympic gold medal is inducted as one of the headliners of the Class of 2010.

Players and USA Basketball staff talked with fondness about the memory of a basketball legend when the first group of NBA players in the Summer Games was named a Hall finalist in February, so imagine the potential for bittersweet smiles and stories now that the team is being enshrined. They’ll make sure Daly is still part of the group when it gathers to receive the honor. Watch Magic Johnson or Charles Barkley or one of the other mega-stars bring him up without even being prompted.

A few other potential NBA-related highlights I’m anticipating at Symphony Hall, site of the ceremony a few blocks from the basketball museum itself:

*Karl Malone’s acceptance speech for his individual induction, on the night he also goes in as part of the Dream Team. Malone can be very emotional and speaks from the heart, the admirable quality that sometimes got him in trouble as a player. He has kept a surprisingly low profile since retiring. This is his time to reflect.

*Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson together on stage. Just because it’s Michael, Larry and Magic together. It doesn’t matter if they say anything.

*Everyone else – his wife, three kids, other family members and members of the basketball family that appreciated him like few others of his time – cherishing the moment for Dennis Johnson. Donna said her late husband would have basked in the honor and admitted she was having trouble holding back tears when word came in April that DJ had been elected to the Hall. If she speaks on his behalf tonight, with emotions swirling inside, it could be powerful.

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Winter, Ramsay Share Daly Award

June 6, 2010  ·  6:37PM

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Posted by Sekou Smith

LOS ANGELES – Triangle offense guru Tex Winter and legendary coach and basketball commentator Dr. Jack Ramsay shared the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award, handed out before Game 2 of the NBA Finals Sunday night at Staples Center.

Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle, president of the NBA Coaches Association, was on hand to deliver the award to the coaching giants. Tommy Heinsohn received the inaugural award named in of Daly, who won back-to-back championships with the Detroit Pistons and coached the Dream Team to an Olympic gold medal during his Hall of Fame career. Daly died last year of pancreatic cancer.

“I’m honored to receive this award,” Ramsay said. “Chuck was a special guy in het way that he coached, the way that he dressed, the way that he got his teams to play the game that he wanted them to play, without an overbearing presence on the team. I think it’s very fitting that the coaches association has named an award in his honor. And I’m especially fortunate and honored to receive this award … and I’m honored to share this honor with Tex.”

Ramsay guided the Portland Trail Blazers to the NBA title in 1977 and remains one of the game’s global voices for his work as a coach and broadcaster. The offensive architect for nine title teams under Phil Jackson, six in Chicago and three with the Lakers, Winter received a 10th ring from the Lakers after they won the 2009 title (below).

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