The Golden Age of Basketball-Chapter 488 - 105: Curly Hair
Chuck Daly, male, white American, was born on July 20, 1930, in Kane City, Pennsylvania. His father was Earl Daly and his mother was Geraldine Daly.
In 1952, he started working after graduating from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. His career was solely dedicated to basketball coaching, and he never played professional basketball.
He taught at Punxsutawney High School, Duke University, and the University of Pennsylvania successively. In 1978, he entered the NBA, serving as an assistant coach for the Philadelphia 76ers.
In 1981, he became the head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, but was fired for leading the team to a dismal record of 9 wins and 32 losses. He has been the head coach of the Detroit Pistons since 1983.
In the first game of the 1987 NBA Finals, the Detroit Pistons faced off against the Portland Trail Blazers. During the third quarter, Chuck Daly was accidentally hit hard by Gan Guoyang, breaking his nose and causing copious nosebleeds. He had to be carried off the court by the team doctor.
An outstanding NCAA coach, a distinguished NBA courtside performer, a renowned and wealthy patriarch in Detroit, a time-tested poor boy from the working class, a collector of blue suits, a shopping fanatic at Macy’s, a godfather to the Bad Boys, he exited the stage with glory.
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Chuck Daly often had a dream where he found himself destitute. The hundreds of blue suits in his wardrobe vanished into thin air; his Cadillac disappeared from the parking lot; and his luxurious mansion in Detroit was reduced to ashes.
He returned to the impoverished area in western Pennsylvania, living in Hoover Village, starving, with not enough food to eat or clothes to cover his body, only able to have a bowl of pea soup each day, eventually dying of hunger...
Every time he had this dream, Daly would wake up drenched in sweat. Only then, feeling his soft Simmons mattress and turning on the light to see the spacious and luxurious room, could his heart gradually calm down.
The dream was a reflection of his childhood experiences; he was born into a destitute working-class family, always under the shadow of the Great Depression.
Throughout his upbringing, he had almost nothing and there was nothing he could rely on but himself.
His parents gave all they could to feed their children and had no extra strength to provide more help.
From a young age, he began working as a swimming pool cleaner at the YMCA, earning 25 cents an hour. In high school, he also worked at a leather factory processing hides from South America.
The leather factory was foul-smelling, very unpleasant, and working there made people dirty and ugly.
But Daly was the opposite. Although he was poor, he had a flair for dressing well and always put a lot of effort into his appearance and attire.
Therefore, despite not being very smart and coming from a poor family background, he managed to get a girlfriend in high school. The girlfriend would help him with his homework and invite him to have big meals at her house—his nickname in his youth was "Hungry Ghost" because he had a big appetite, always eating a lot, owing to the constant hunger of his childhood.
In high school, he was the best basketball player at his school, but compared to the real geniuses, his talent for basketball was too mediocre. He was simply very hardworking on the court.
After graduating from college, he became the basketball coach at Punxsutawney High School, where he also served as the school bus driver, the golf coach, and an English speech teacher.
Every time they had an away game, he would drive the yellow school bus to the visiting school and play a basketball game in the cramped high school gym that no one cared about.
He persevered, spending eight years in Punxsutawney, earning a total of 3,600 dollars and becoming the second most well-known name in the town—the first was the famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil.
Daly might have had average talent and ordinary intelligence, but he was extraordinarily passionate about basketball, which propelled him from the very bottom to the pinnacle of the basketball world.
Because of this, he knew better than anyone the price of success and the kind of tactics required to achieve it.
He loved shopping and dressing up; he owned hundreds of designer suits; he lived in a million-dollar mansion; he had thick, beautiful curly hair and claimed he would rather lose his limbs than lose his hair. After each training session, he would restyle his curls and press the trouser legs of his suit with an iron.
What people didn’t know was that even though his suits were genuine, he bought them from discount stores or specifically chose leftover stock, goods that needed to be cleared, and end-of-season sale items. He only bought things that were cheap.
Although his mansion was worth a million dollars, he actually acquired it at a low price when the homeowner urgently needed to sell. He always said that if he had been more patient in bargaining, the takeover price could have been even lower.
The Cadillac he drove was a gift from General Motors, and in Detroit, there was no shortage of cars, including luxury ones.
This curly hair was where he spent money most frequently, always bringing in a stylist for upkeep. Once, he spent $34, which pained him greatly.
But these beautiful locks greatly enhanced Daly’s image. He displayed a good public persona on the Detroit Television Station program Chuck Daly’s One on One, significantly boosting his popularity and reputation.
So, when the Detroit Pistons continued to commit rough fouls during games, and the players increasingly used non-basketball moves to intimidate and threaten their opponents, Chuck Daly wasn’t seen as a bloodthirsty lunatic or an unprincipled schemer.
On the contrary, his image remained linked with elegance and propriety, as if his band of Bad Boys had kidnapped him, and they would have been even worse without their rich daddy around.
Ironically, with Daly’s presence, these guys, who otherwise only knew how to fight, were now also playing ball.
What an inspirational story of basketball saving troubled youths.
But now, the story’s protagonist was knocked flying by a football-style savage tackle.
During a so-called "accidental" save, Gan Guoyang, with the ball in his arms, collided with Daly, who couldn’t dodge in time.
Gan Guoyang’s forearms were positioned just right to strike Daly on the bridge of his nose.
The blow was truly vicious. Daly’s nose bled profusely, splattering blood onto his blue suit and white shirt.
After standing up, Guoyang looked at the fallen Daly with hardly any apology in his eyes.
Dennis Rodman wanted to rush over and choke Gan Guoyang but was blocked by Mychal Thompson, who was also charging over.
The Pistons’ starters and bench were incensed, whereas the Trail Blazers players all surged forward to protect Gan Guoyang.
Not only that, but fans in the front row of Memorial Coliseum also charged in, determined to protect Ah Gan—during the first round against the Warriors, the security in the front rows of Memorial Coliseum wasn’t spectacular.
The Trail Blazers’ players and fans all knew they had to protect Ah Gan. It wasn’t for fear that Gan would get hurt or beaten, but rather that he might lose his temper and fight back, which would get him ejected.
The scene was chaotic, and the game was paused. According to post-game statistics from Nielsen Company, viewership for the finals reached its peak during this moment, prompting CBS to run a spree of commercials during the subsequent break.
Gan Guoyang himself wanted to twist that kid Rodman’s head off—Who gave you the balls to charge at me like that?
Consequently, the game was halted for more than ten minutes, but the referees did not eject Gan Guoyang, because the replay showed it was indeed an accident.
Now, the atmosphere in the whole Memorial Coliseum was seething, akin to a volcano. If the refs had ejected Ah Gan, there would surely have been an unprecedented brawl involving fans and players.
The role of the referees isn’t just to make fair and just calls but to control the situation on the court.
Quelling the situation and allowing the game to continue was of utmost importance.
The head referees tonight were Darell Garretson and Joe Crawford.
Crawford was the younger one, having started officiating in 1977, while Garretson had been whistling since 1967.
For Garretson, scenes like this had been common in the games of the ’60s and ’70s, so he quickly knew how to calm things down.
Crawford, on the other hand, was a bit stunned. After ’77, the NBA had become much gentler, and he had never witnessed such a bloody scene before.
Chuck Daly, with a broken nose, was carried off the court by medical staff. He didn’t touch his nose but instead smoothed his hair, asking the team doctor, "Is my hair messed up?"
The doctor glanced at Daly and said, "No, it’s very neat."
Daly smiled and said, "Then that’s good."
