NOTE From The Sports Time Traveler
This is the most unusual story I’ve shared as The Sports Time Traveler.
I normally make virtual trips into the past to write about my experience covering a sporting event.
But today’s article features a brilliant basketball man from the past who dipped into the future and foretold what would be with stunning clarity.
New Brunswick, NJ - Friday, December 12, 1975
I’ve been following Rutgers basketball in the 1975-1976 season. This is a highly entertaining team that uses the quickness of their athletes to play a full-court pressing defense. And led by sharpshooter Phil Sellers (31 ppg in his first 4 full games), they also have enough offensive firepower to average 100 points per game through the first 5 games of the season in which they are undefeated.
Despite this, nobody that “knows” college basketball has Rutgers in their top 20.
Nobody that is except Chuck Daly.
Chuck Daly is the coach of the University of Pennsylvania Quakers. And fitting of the school’s Ivy League status, their coach is a brilliant basketball man.
Penn has been a powerhouse under coach Daly, posting a record of 90 - 18 in his 4 years at the helm, winning the Ivy League championship each season, and finishing as high as 3rd in the final AP poll in 1972, when they reached the NCAA regional final.
NOTE From The Sports Time Traveler
Chuck Daly achieved success at Penn without the benefit of any outstanding individual players.
None of Chuck Daly’s players from 1972 - 1975 ever went on to start a single game in the NBA.
The Penn Coach Loves Rutgers
It is it a bit odd, no, it is very odd, that Chuck Daly, the coach of Penn, could not stop talking about Rutgers in the most positive manner possible this week.
Perhaps it was all a ruse, employing reverse psychology chicanery, to get into the heads of an opponent’s players. Penn, after all, was scheduled to play Rutgers last night here in 1975.
But who tries to psyche out another team by telling them how good they are?
And Chuck Daly didn’t just talk about Rutgers, he put his own reputation on the line by voting for Rutgers.
This past Monday, Chuck Daly cast his ballot in the UPI Coaches Poll for the top 20 basketball teams.
He didn’t just put Rutgers in his top 20. He put them at number 2!
That’s right, Penn coach Chuck Daly voted for Rutgers as the 2nd best men’s basketball team in the country, just behind Indiana.
Indiana was the consensus #1 team having gone 31 - 1 in 1975. They had played deep into the NCAA Tournament twice in the past 3 years and had not finished the season out of the top 5 in the past 4 years.
Rutgers was well… Rutgers. They hadn’t done anything significant on a national scale… ever. They had made just one NCAA Tournament in school history and had lost the one game they played in that lone appearance.
On the strength of that single endorsement by Chuck Daly, Rutgers was ranked #17 in the UPI poll when it was published on Tuesday of this week.
Without Chuck Daly’s #2 vote, Rutgers would not have been in the top 20 in the UPI poll.
And Rutgers was not in the top 20 in the AP poll, which is based on voting by the sportswriters.
No basketball man in America, except Chuck Daly, thinks Rutgers is a top 20 team.
But Daly didn’t stop there. At halftime of the Knicks-76ers game in Madison Square Garden last Monday night, Daly was in attendance and was interviewed at halftime by Knicks’ broadcaster Cal Ramsey. Ramsey asked Daly what he thought about Rutgers and Daly replied, “I expect them to be in the Final Four.”
Daly then backed up his assertion by comparing them to the 1964 UCLA NCAA Championship team. Daly said, “I was an assistant at Duke in 1964 when we played UCLA with Hazzard, Goodrich and Erickson. That’s who Rutgers reminds me of. They’re small and quick and pressure you from baseline to baseline just like UCLA.”
Just like the 1964 UCLA Championship team!
He’s talking about Rutgers!
Rutgers went 5 - 17 in 1964. And Rutgers has lost a minimum of 7 times each season in this decade.
Rutgers vs. Boston College
Daly said all these wonderful things about Rutgers the night before they played at Boston College in a game that was billed as the dual for primacy in the East. Rutgers, playing on the road, demolished BC 105 - 82 to run their record to 4 - 0.
BC coach Bob Zuffaleto told Marty McLaughlin of the New York Daily News:
Rutgers vs. Penn
Next up for Rutgers was Chuck Daly’s University of Pennsylvania Quakers, in a game played last night in Madison Square Garden in New York.
The Ivy League champions played tough against the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. The game was tied at halftime at 46, and was tied in the middle of the 2nd half at 65.
Ken O’Brien of the New Brunswick Home News described what happened next in his article in this morning’s paper:
Most impressive about the 15 point burst is that it featured scoring that involved all 5 of Rutgers’ top players.
Sophomore forward Hollis Copeland started the run with a baseline jumper.
Then senior shooting guard Mike Dabney scored on a driving layup and again on a corner jumper.
Junior point guard Ed Jordan’s nifty pass enabled Dabney’s jump shot.
Senior Phil Sellers, the team’s leading scorer, hit 2 free throws and made a baseline jumper.
Finally, freshman center James Bailey scored on a layup and ended the run with a 3 point play.
Rutgers maintained the lead over the final 6 minutes to win convincingly 95 - 80. Sellers led the team again with 32.
More Kind Words About Rutgers
If Penn Coach Chuck Daly had been saying nice things about Rutgers prior to the game solely to soften them up, he could’ve dropped the act after the game.
But that’s not what he did.
Instead, he talked glowingly about Rutgers to sportswriter Ken O’Brien in an article that appeared in this morning’s New Brunswick Home News, “I voted for them as the No. 2 team in the country, right behind Indiana… A lot of people made light of the fact that I placed them so high but that’s exactly the way I feel about the team. I question whether they’ll lose more than two games this season - and I think Tom Young should be up for Coach of the Year honors.”
And then Daly finished by doubling down on what he had told Cal Ramsey earlier in the week, “Rutgers has a very good shot of being in the Final Four in the NCAA Tournament.”
SPOILER ALERT
If you don’t want to know what actually happens in 1976, that is, if you don’t want to see the results of Chuck Daly’s predictions, then DON’T READ this section.
One of my cardinal rules of Sports Time Travel is that you can never look ahead. It spoils the feeling of being back in time, and it ruins the excitement of experiencing past events as though they had not happened yet, especially when you don’t know or don’t remember the outcome.
But in this case, I have perfect recall of what happens. That’s because as a 12 year old boy growing up in the New Brunswick, NJ area, I was a huge fan of the Rutgers Scarlet Knights in the 1975-76 season.
My dad took me to see many of the games in the old “Barn” in New Brunswick. With a seating capacity of just 2,800, the tiny building rocked with noise, louder than that of any other basketball or hockey arena I’ve ever been inside (and I’ve been to a Toronto Maple Leafs match).
FYI - I understand Springsteen played the Barn multiple times. I can just imagine what those concerts must have been like. If you go to YouTube and type in “Bruce Springsteen - Oct. 12th, 1976 - Live from New Brunswick,” you can listen to one of Springsteen’s concerts from the Barn.
This morning, I read the December 12, 1975, New Brunswick Home News for the 2nd time. The first time I read it was 50 years ago, and of course, at that time I did not know what was in store for Rutgers’ season. I just knew we had an exciting team.
50 years ago, when I came across the comments by Chuck Daly, I must have immediately dismissed his Final Four forecast, because I honestly don’t recall reading such a preposterous prediction.
But reading it today was a shocker.
What Chuck Daly said actually came true at the end of the season.
Rutgers went undefeated in the regular season.
Rutgers made it to the NCAA Final Four.
In the Final Four, they lost the semi-final game, and then they lost the consolation game.
As a result, Rutgers lost precisely 2 games in the 1975-76 season. That’s exactly the maximum number of losses that Chuck Daly said they would sustain.
Chuck Daly was one brilliant basketball man!
How Brilliant of a Basketball Man Was Chuck Daly?
Daly never played big time college basketball. He worked his way up in the basketball world over two decades, first coaching 8 years of high school basketball before landing the assistant coaching job at Duke in 1963. With Daly on the staff, Duke reached the Final Four for the first time in school history in 1964 and made the Final Four again in 1966.
Daly then got his first college head coaching job when he took over for Bob Cousy at Boston College in 1969. After two seasons, he took on the head coaching job at Penn.
In 1978, Daly became an assistant coach on the Philadelphia 76ers. In 2 of the 4 seasons Daly was an assistant, the 76ers reached the NBA Finals.
Meanwhile, his former Penn team, playing with 5 starters that he had recruited before moving to the 76ers, reached the Final Four in 1979, a further accolade for Daly.
In 1982, Daly landed his first NBA head coaching job with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The next season he was hired as head coach of the Detroit Pistons. The Pistons instantly turned around from a perennial loser to a force in the Eastern Conference. They made the playoffs in every one of Daly’s 9 years leading the team.
And then Chuck Daly achieved basketball royalty. He guided the Detroit Pistons to back-to-back NBA Titles in 1989 and 1990.
When it came time to select the USA Olympic Basketball coach for the first ever Dream Team, Chuck Daly was the natural choice.
Daly had the responsibility of ensuring that the greatest team of superstars ever gathered would play effectively together and fulfill the vision of dominating the world.
Daly delivered.
The Dream Team won their games by an average of 44 points on the way to earning the Olympic Gold Medal and becoming a legendary team for the ages.
A Valuable Management Lesson
I believe one of the reasons Chuck Daly was successful as a coach is because of his great management skills.
About 30 years ago, I learned a lesson from Chuck Daly that I’ve applied repeatedly in my personal and professional life. I heard him discuss how he was able to coach the un-coachable Dennis Rodman. Rodman had been a key player on the Pistons’ championship teams.
Daly said that rather than try to tell Rodman what to do, he would instead ask him how he planned to approach a game. For example, if the Pistons were playing the Utah Jazz, he would say to Rodman, “How are you going to defend Karl Malone?” In this manner, he could make Rodman think and then offer suggestions. If Daly instead had tried to dictate a plan for Rodman to guard Malone, Rodman likely would have dismissed Daly’s advice.
I’ve always thought this was a brilliant approach. Most people don’t like being told what to do. As a manager of people, I have utilized the Chuck Daly approach to let people develop their own plans for how to achieve a goal, and then simply monitor their progress and offer suggestions when needed for how to improve the plan.
Chuck Daly was one brilliant basketball man. And 50 years ago this week, he proved it by forecasting a future vision that no one else saw.
Wonderful, highly informative and enlightening article about a brilliant basketball coach. I did not know about Coach Daly’s impressive collegiate coaching past until reading your article.
Thanks for sharing your insights.