Chuck Daly

Chuck Daly, the head coach of two Detroit Pistons championship teams, the first head coach of a U.S Olympic basketball team featuring NBA players and a 1994 Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame inductee, died Saturday morning in Jupiter, Fla. He was 78.

Coaches and players throughout the league have praised Daly’s impact on the sport.

Boston coach Doc Rivers, who succeed Daly as Orlando Magic coach in 1999, was one of those coaches.

“He’s meant a lot to me personally,” Rivers said. “My first job was following Chuck Daly. He’s been an advisor to me my whole coaching career.”

“You hear players all the time say that Oscar Robertson, Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan, Dr. J or Larry Bird kind of paved the way for the current NBA players to make the type of money they make or live the lifestyle they live and be known as the best players in the world of basketball,” Cavaliers coach Mike Brown, the NBA’s Coach of the Year, said recently. “And Chuck Daly has done the same thing for guys like myself and Eric Spoelstra and Lawrence Frank. He’s paved the way.