HAVE TITLE, WILL TRAVEL : NBA Championship Leaves Piston Coach Chuck Daly With No Time to Rest : Pistons’ Victory Leaves Daly With No Time to Rest

The off-season has come to Chuck Daly in the form of a hurricane, carrying him about the world in a whirlwind fashion that he might have imagined but could not have prepared for. The body is looking for a 33-r.p.m. weekend sometime, but the schedule insists on nothing short of 78.

The fast-forward life of a coach who has recently won the National Basketball Assn. title dictates such a disposition, all that to-the-victor-goes-the-spoils stuff.

Daly has always enjoyed the trappings of success, having had commercials and weekly televisions shows in Detroit, and accepting requests for appearances on the rubber-chicken circuit long before the Pistons swept the Lakers six weeks ago.

But now, he’s feeling somewhat trapped by success.

“I’m more tired now than I was during the regular season,” he said.

And he wasn’t kidding. The thought of a weekend to himself is as remote as the possibility of Daly’s buying his suits off the rack.

Daly says he hasn’t had a day off since the Forum clock hit 0:00 on June 13 and the Pistons charged into the locker room for their champagne shower.

True, sometimes the tasks have not been any harder than sitting for so long (the victory parade through Detroit and subsequent celebration in suburban Auburn Hills, Mich.) and standing for so long (waiting to meet the President at the White House), but this is supposed to be vacation time. Time with the family. Time to get away from basketball.

Instead, Daly has been to Spain for a clinic; to Atlanta to help roast Hawk Coach Mike Fratello; to northwestern Pennsylvania for a basketball camp; to Philadelphia to help roast Billy Cunningham, part owner of the Miami Heat; back to northwestern Pennsylvania and the camp; to Bill Laimbeer’s charity golf tournament in Michigan; to Pittsburgh to speak at a high school all-star camp; to La Jolla for the Pistons’ free agent/rookie camp.

Now, he’s in Los Angeles for summer league games at Loyola Marymount.

“I’ve found that until you have been on national TV, in prime time, you can never understand all the stuff about celebrity status in terms of recognition,” said Daly, who has more commitments ahead.

“It can all become a bit freakish. You kind of know what movie stars--although I’m certainly not putting myself in their category--go through with people always coming up to them. Everyday life changes. I go to Mass and all the kids stare at you. Things like that take some getting used to.”

Then again, if it so awful, 26 other NBA coaches would volunteer to take over for him next year.

“Quite honestly, I think he’s enjoying every moment,” said Dick Versace, Daly’s assistant for 2 1/2 seasons before becoming coach of the Indiana Pacers in January. “At times, I’m sure he gets exhausted, but he’s such a naturally self-effacing person it’s hard to say no when people ask him to come. He wants to pay them back for all the help they’ve been to him.

“I think he’ll have gone to about five different camps to speak before the summer is over. He wants to go back and show he’s no different toward them after winning an NBA title than when he was coaching at Penn or an assistant at Duke.”

Daly, who will begin his seventh season with the Pistons in the fall, doesn’t deny enjoying the spotlight. But his personality won’t allow him to make it a perfect time. Knowing that Rick Mahorn won’t be there when camp opens in October has, at least slightly, dampened his enjoyment.

“It definitely took an edge off (winning the title),” Daly said.

The Pistons lost Mahorn, a starting forward, to the Minnesota Timberwolves in the expansion draft, a quick change from winner to loser made all the more biting by the timing. The announcement that Mahorn had become a former Bad Boy was made on the day of the victory parade.

General Manager Jack McCloskey was so hoping to work out a deal that day, to make sure neither expansion team selected Mahorn, that he rode with a portable phone in the car.

No such trade ever was put together, though, and the Pistons went from the parade to another celebration at the Palace of Auburn Hills, where the team plays its home games. Afterward, McCloskey, Daly and assistant coaches Brendan Malone and Brendan Suhr met in the locker room before breaking the news to the players.

“I’ve never seen four adults so devastated about something in sports,” Daly said.

That is probably his most vivid memory of the hectic weeks since the NBA finals started. Not the sweep of the defending champions, not the trip to the White House, not the star treatment at church.

Daly is enjoying this special time, all right. Just not as much as he might. He has achieved the highest goal in the business, and it feels a little, well, anticlimactic.

“Maybe it’s heresy, but maybe everything would have been more meaningful last year, because it would have been a surprise,” he said. “At least more of a surprise because we were in position to win it in the seven-game series. This year, we were one of the favorites, so everyone kind of expected us to win.”

Daly paused and searched for a better explanation.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe you work so hard to get somewhere and it just takes some time to appreciate it. . . . Most of all, though, I like the term world champion. That does give me a thrill.”

Friends aren’t too concerned if the feelings appear to come off somewhat dull. That’s just Daly, who for all his qualities as an affable and very likable person has a way of working backward. Even at a time like this, he’ll look at the bad before getting on with the good.

“Like I said, I think he is enjoying the time,” Versace said. “But his manner is, ‘Maybe I should start examining what went wrong.’ Ricky’s not there anymore, so (Daly) is thinking about that a lot right now, about how they won’t be together next season.”

Daly is already looking at 1989-90--the good and the bad. That’s why he is at the summer league, to look at players. But part of the preparation to defend the NBA title includes, at last, some vacation in August and September. Burnout is a concern, after all.

“I’m looking forward to next season because it’ll be a chance for me to slow down,” he said, smiling but obviously not kidding.