THE NBA CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES : LOS ANGELES LAKERS vs. DETROIT PISTONS : PISTONS SUIT HIM : At 57, Daly Has Come a Long, Long Way From Punxsutawney

For those of you bored to tears by K.C. Jones’ trips to the National Basketball Assn. Finals--he’s a nice man, he sings in cocktail bars, Larry Bird lets him make occasional substitutions by himself and that about exhausts the subject--it’s your lucky season.

New blood, babies.

Meet Chuck Daly.

Everyone has a story to tell and Daly, 57 and the second oldest coach in the league, has waited a lifetime for an audience this size.

How about this one? Kid from nowhere, has rollicking times, is smiled upon at last by Dame Fortune but has trouble getting anyone to take him seriously. Sort of like Rodney Dangerfield, back alone against the Laker fast break.

“I tell ya, I don’t get any respect. The ref flips me. He says, ‘You with the pompadour, you’re outta here!’ I say, ‘You mean me?’ He says, ‘I know Pat Riley, I see him in the car ads, but what’s your name again?’ “

Lots of coaches have humble beginnings in high schools, but most of them come from places with names like Granada Hills or Power Memorial.

Daly coached for eight years at Punxsutawney High in Punxsutawney, Pa., home of the ‘Chucks. This wasn’t a reference to his own name, but to Woodchucks, the town being famous for its mythical groundhog, Phil. If Phil comes up on his day and sees his shadow, there are supposed to be six more weeks of winter. This may be great for the town, but how would you like to play second fiddle to a groundhog?

That was Daly in 1962, 32 years old, a man who loved a game that was passing him by.

He made a cold call and got a job as a Duke assistant. Then came stints coaching Boston College, where he tried to make them forget Bob Cousy, and failed; Penn, where he tried to make them forget Dick Harter, and failed, not to mention his first pro job, with the Cleveland Cavaliers, where he tried to forget Ted Stepien, and failed.

He spent 93 days with the Cavaliers, living in a Holiday Inn in the rolling hills of Richfield, Ohio, going 9-32 and getting fired.

Nope, nobody knows the trouble he has seen.

But they’re about to.

“If you only knew how difficult I’ve had it,” Daly said, laughing, happy to be asked. “That’s why I look old. I’m really only 45.

“I’ll tell you this. I’ve spent my life without working. If I can keep this up for a few more years, I’ll really have done it.

“What’s there to do in Punxsutawney? They have a special hamburger, I forget the name. They put hamburger in a hot dog roll. It’s very unique. Go to the Elks for dinner. What else? Not a lot. I used to go every single night to the local paper and watch the scores come over the ticker tape. I was there eight years, eight long years.”

In 1963, he hitched a ride to Louisville, Ky., to see his first Final Four. He bought a seat from a scalper--”last row from the top in Freedom Hall, behind the basket”--and fell head over heels in love with the scene. This was him, you understand.

A year later, he wrote Duke’s Vic Bubas and, surprise, was hired. A year after buying a seat from a scalper, he watched the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. final from courtside, as Duke lost to UCLA.

“I tell that one at clinics,” Daly said. “It shows anyone can make it.”

Bubas’ staff was a jumping-off point for coming coaching stars such as Hubie Brown. Whenever there was a vacancy, there’d be 50 applicants, so what attracted Bubas to this small-timer from western Pennsylvania?

“A lot of people just hired their friends,” said Bubas, now commissioner of the Sun Belt Conference, from his office in Tampa, Fla.

“I thought if there was somebody out there who wanted the job and deserved the job, I wanted to know who he was.

“I wanted to know if there was someone who wanted the job badly. If there was, and he had the stuff to do the job, then he had what I wanted and I had what he wanted.”

Daly, gregarious, industrious and hungry as a pilgrim coming out of the desert, worked his way from Durham, N.C., to Chestnut Hill, Mass., and Philadelphia. There he met Billy Cunningham, a former Philadelphia 76er player about to be named the team’s coach, who knew just about nothing about X’s and O’s. So he hired Daly to teach him how to doodle on napkins.

Daly coached, traveled the country on an expense account and shopped for clothes on Rodeo Drive. At Penn, he was ridiculed for his expensive tastes and his habit of shooting his cuffs when he walked the sidelines, but this was pro ball and people couldn’t have cared less.

One night, after a 76er victory in Atlanta, and a fine late-night meal, he put his arm around a beat writer and asked: “Isn’t this a scam? Isn’t this the greatest scam in the world?”

There was only one thing left to shoot for, a head coaching job, and that was coming, too.

“Because of our success, because of my relationship with Billy, I became somewhat of a hot property,” Daly said. “I was interviewed for three jobs, one of which I could have had.

“I just kind of rode along. I thought, ‘It’s going to happen every year, I’ll get another opportunity.’

“The next year, the Atlanta job opened up and Kevin Loughery had that one before it was open.

“Now I’m looking at my age and I’m saying, ‘Hey, I want to be a head coach in this league. I better take a hard look at the next job that comes along.’ ”

Bad luck, it was the Cavalier job. Daly says it took one week to figure out his position was untenable. He served his time in the Holiday Inn.

“You know the problem?” Daly asked, laughing. “I didn’t get a suite like the players did.

“I just had one room. The closet was so small, I had to leave the rest of my stuff home. I felt really terrible. I had to wear the same outfit 2-3 games. I was only there for 41, so . . . “

He got another shot a year later, with the Detroit Pistons. They’d had 24 losing seasons in 27 before him, but drafted Isiah Thomas just two years before, in 1981.

Daly is a players’ coach, quick to build them up, careful about barking at them, and luckily he had more players. The Pistons won 49, 46 and 46 games, just trying to outscore other teams.

When John Salley and Dennis Rodman came along in the ’86 draft, Daly remade the team into a defensive power, went 52-30 and took the Celtics to seven games in last spring’s Eastern Conference finals.

His players may fight the world but Daly, hearty, quick to laugh, ostensibly humble, remains popular with his peers, including, amazingly enough, the coaches of the bitter rivals--Mike Fratello of the Atlanta Hawks and Doug Collins of the Chicago Bulls.

Daly has also remade himself into a star. His TV show, which precedes Piston telecasts now outdraws network sitcoms locally.

Is he big? Is this his time?

His contract has expired, and he decided to wait before re-signing until after the season. Jack McCloskey, the Pistons’ general manager, said his coach has gambled and won, as much as admitting that the vault is open.

“I can’t imagine having another coach besides Chuck,” center Bill Laimbeer said.

So finally, the kid from Punxsutawney is holding all the cards?

“Never,” Chuck Daly said. “Never. This is a tough organization.”

It’s not that tough. He’s right, if you don’t mind the trips, the sleepless nights, the owners and players, the ups and downs, it’s the greatest scam in the whole wide world.