Chuck Daly

DETROIT (Reuters) - Former basketball coach Chuck Daly, who led the U.S. “Dream Team” to a gold medal at the 1992 Olympics and led the Detroit Pistons to two NBA championships, died on Saturday, the Pistons said. He was 78. The Hall of Fame coach had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in February. He died in Jupiter, Florida, with his family at his side, the team said.

“He was a man of incredible class and dignity. He was a mentor and a friend,” Doug Collins said. “He taught me so much and was always so supportive of me and my family. I loved him and will miss him.”

“He educated us because he had come from Philadelphia and we had all those wars with Boston and the ups and downs,” Isiah Thomas said. “When he first got here we were an offensive team that ran the ball up and down and scored a lot of points. He slowly transformed us to be one of the best defensive teams to probably play the game. And he did it in such a way that was slow and methodical. He was able to get us to buy in day by day, month by month and year by year. He didn’t come in and say we are going to be a different team right away.”

“I played against Chuck’s teams throughout the NBA for a lot of years. He always had his team prepared, he’s a fine coach,” Larry Bird said. “Chuck did a good job of keeping us together. It wasn’t about who scored the most points, it was about one thing: winning the gold medal.”

“Chuck Daly managed pro athletes better than any coach I know,” said former assistant coach Brendan Malone. “People say it was easy to coach those old Pistons teams. Well, they weren’t there every day. It was very difficult to manage that team, and I’m telling you a lot of coaches would not have succeeded with that group. They were filled with egos, but Chuck knew how to handle them.”