Talk Of 70 Wins Would Drive A Former Pistons Coach Crazy

Daly: Chicken Little in Armani


Can you imagine if the Prince of Pessimism himself, Chuck Daly, coached today's Detroit Pistons? I think this team -- and the media covering it -- would change Daddy Rich's attire from Armani suit to straitjacket.

Daly never thought the glass was half full in Detroit. Sometimes he didn't even want to acknowledge any liquid in it at all. He was the epitome of the wary, let's-not-get-too-excited coach, always leery of what lied around the corner.

Once, when the Pistons had jumped out to a 2-0 lead in a best-of-five series over the overmatched Boston Celtics -- minus Larry Bird due to injury -- Daly was in hand-wringing mode.

"I'm bringing enough clothes to Boston to last several days," Chuck told the press, meaning that he was afraid the Pistons would have to play two games in Beantown -- not just one. It was never in the bag with Chuck Daly. The Pistons won Game 3, completing the first round sweep. So some of Chuck's clothes went unworn in Boston.

The Pistons played the New Jersey Nets in another of those best-of-fivers, back in 1985.

"They've (the Nets) beaten us like a drum all season," Chuck said with the proper amount of foreboding. "I have no idea how we're going to win a game, let alone the series." The Pistons swept the Nets away in three.

Even as the team got better and better, and worthy of championship talk, Chuck Daly played the role of Prince of Pessimism -- one of his nicknames in Detroit -- without wavering. Not that he didn't savor success, of course. Next time you look at video of the Pistons celebrating their second straight title in 1990, on the court in Portland, be sure to look at Chuck Daly hugging trainer Mike Abdenour. It isn't hard to read his lips.

"we won it! We f------ won it!," Daly shouted into Abdenour's ear.

This season's Pistons, with their glittering 22-3 getaway, are starting to cause folks to talk about a plateau that isn't bantied about too much: 70 wins. Such talk would put Chuck Daly in a funny farm, coiffed hair and all.

Scottie Pippen is one who believes the Pistons have a shot. And he ought to know what it takes, having played on the Chicago Bulls team that won 72 games. "They're playing such good basketball," Pippen said the other day. "And they have so many ways to beat you."

It's still hard to imagine, despite their jackrabbit start, that the Pistons could win 70 times. That means no more than 12 defeats, which means they only have nine more mulligans. But the franchise record of 63 wins is very much in peril, I would confess. The cruel NBA schedule, with its four-games-in-five nights fetish, can snap you up and put you on a little downward slide before you know it. But yet the Pistons have handled their early scheduling rigors with some panache, so who knows?

For his part, today's coach, Flip Saunders, has remained stoic and very noncommittal about the 70 wins talk. "It's still early," is about all you'll get out of Flip nowadays.

Today the Pistons play at an .880 clip. And still Chuck Daly, if he was the coach, would be trying to convince us of bogeymen under the bed.