NBA 1990-91 : They’re Favored in the Daly Triple : Pistons: After an injury-filled exhibition season, the champions look ready to defend their two titles.

Sure, he knew he was re-upping for hard times but he thought he might get a little reprieve. Say, until the season started?

Maybe that’s how it works for the stars in Hollywood, where they have year-round tans and lunches with movie directors, but not here in Middle America for the coach of the twice-over NBA champion Detroit Pistons, Chuck Daly, also known as the Prince of Pessimism.

It didn’t have to be like this. Daly turned down NBC to chase his own three-peat (that word again, couldn’t you just gag?) last accomplished when Boston’s eight-year run ended in 1966, the days of the real dynasties. That’s the siren’s song Daly can blame, now that injury has wrecked his exhibition season and loosed the old specter-- Oh Lord, is this the year it goes wrong and they mutiny and throw me off the plane?

He could have had the fat salary, short hours, limo to the studio, makeup people dabbing powder on his forehead--the free suits! Instead, here he is, in the cold, empty Palace, hours before an exhibition game, trying to get his reserves ready since 60% of his first string is out.

Isiah Thomas just got a finger in an eye and needed minor surgery. Bill Laimbeer’s cheekbone was broken by Seattle’s Olden Polynice, whose home is presumably buried under congratulatory telegrams from around the league. Dennis Rodman . . . oooh, there’s the scary one. The Pistons were whispering that his ankle sprain might not heal all season.

“This is what can happen to a good basketball team and it can change your life and change your season,” Daly said, optimistic as ever.

“The one I’m most concerned about is the one Rodman has. And he’s vital to any success we’re going to have.”

A sprained ankle? It’s not long-term, is it?

“It could be. It’s a (Mikhail) Baryshnikov-type ballet tendon thing. He’s been to see one of the doctors that looked at Baryshnikov.

“I mean, any time you got three-four starters out, you’ve gotta be concerned. You become a lottery team very quickly that way. Forget the coaching. Coaching doesn’t have a thing to do with it if you don’t have the players there.”

Five days later, Rodman played in an exhibition.

Hint: Don’t look for them in any lottery.

They suffer. They make you suffer more. They’re the Pistons.

Two years they’ve ruled the NBA, three years in the finals, and they’re still just an opponent for the Lakers, Boston Celtics or Michael Jordan. In last spring’s NBA finals against the Portland Trail Blazers, while the Pistons proved they were, indeed, special--or to use Isiah Thomas’ word, great --TV ratings dived to pre-1980s levels.

Let’s start by giving the Pistons their due. With a little luck, such as a healthy Isiah or no ticky-tack call against Laimbeer putting Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on the line for the winning points in 1988’s Game 6, they might already have three-peated.

The defense, which the ‘70s New York Knicks popularized to considerably more fanfare, the Pistons have re-popularized or, in their case, made infamous. When Detroit let Rick Mahorn go in an expansion draft, the Philadelphia 76ers dealt for him and turned their own fortunes around. Soon no team may be complete without 250 big-bottomed pounds of longshoreman guarding the lane.

The Pistons have made dirty work almost glamorous. The Bad Boys days ended when Mahorn left, give or take the occasional Laimbeerian excess, but the Pistons still embody down and dirty values coaches love--the marginally legal pushing and shoving, the acceptance of self-effacing supporting roles. Barring fractures, a Piston shows up for practice or hears about it, loudly. Here’s Thomas, expressing his impatience with the lethargic William Bedford last summer:

“Anything to do with William Bedford is a waste of time. . . . I’m not in his corner any more. Hey, not everybody deserves to wear ‘Pistons’ across his chest.”

Thus confronted, Bedford hied himself off to a psychiatrist who discovered an attention disorder and prescribed a drug. Bedford had a fine exhibition season.

Thomas plays vicious defense. Rodman and Joe Dumars draw top honors for it annually. Bigger men like Laimbeer and John Salley are poised to make a trip down the lane something a player will think about before trying again.

All this gradually grew from a black hole, which is what the franchise was in 1981, winning 21 games, playing before 5,500 a night, it claimed.

Then the Pistons drafted the one, the only . . .

Isiah.

Of all the game’s great stars, perhaps none but Wilt Chamberlain has had his stars crossed as has Thomas, but his impact is undeniable.

“That he was voted MVP is insignificant,” Laimbeer said last spring after Thomas was honored in the finals, “because MVP is based on a five-game series. He is our MVP. If you ask anyone on our team, or anyone who sees us, they’d all tell you.

“This team is his personality. The determination and drive all revolve around him. The fact that Joe Dumars won the (NBA finals MVP in 1989) is great. We all felt happy for him, but I had a sinking feeling in my heart. It was sad for me because of all Isiah had done over the years. Now that he’s won it, I feel so warm and happy for him.”

Thomas arrived, a superstar with a cherub’s face and an engaging manner that belied his ascent from some mean streets. He had a prodigious appetite for community work and not just the kind where you lend your name. If anything, he had too much heart. Barely six feet himself, he lived to challenge seven-footers and swung on them at the drop of an elbow, too.

He had a fondness, or weakness, for taking too much on himself, but his human qualities--his bonds with the rich kid Laimbeer and with Dumars, the Piston closest to Adrian Dantley who blamed Isiah for his trade--are the team’s pillars. And Thomas does have juice upstairs; Daly thinks a word from Isiah to owner Bill Davidson may have once kept him from being fired.

Somehow, it seemed Thomas never got over the top. When he was young and outrageous, they said he lived to show off in the All-Star game. By 1987, when the Pistons were a power, Thomas fell off the All-NBA teams. Throw in the Larry Bird fiasco, when he gored the wrong sacred cow, and you have the elements of a great career gone askew.

Even in triumph, discordant notes still sound. Within days of the second title and his MVP, Thomas’ name surfaced in an FBI investigation. He was allegedly playing big-money dice games. He said the games were penny-ante, and the FBI acknowledged he wasn’t the target of any probe. A few months later, Isiah pushed aside a cameraman he said wouldn’t let him get into his car; the crew was from the TV station that aired the investigation story.

In recent years, Thomas has become guarded in interviews, although cordial otherwise.

“Honesty has always been my problem,” he said with his Cheshire-cat smile. “I say what I believe and I stick up for what I believe in.”

In the Piston press corps that likes him, he’s sometimes known as “Sybil.”

If you like your personalities constant, try Daly’s, forever mordant.

It’s not that he doesn’t enjoy himself, it’s just that the game and the life he loves entail so many perils, and he’s felt them all.

Before Detroit, his life consisted of getting to the right place at almost the right time. A high school coach at 32 in Punxsutawney, Pa., a town better known for its groundhog, he landed a job out of left field on the prestigious Duke staff by writing Vic Bubas a letter.

He succeeded the legendary Bob Cousy at Boston College. He bore an outsider’s stigma at Pennsylvania in Philadelphia’s inbred Big 5. When he got his first NBA job, it was tendered by Cleveland’s Ted Stepien, who pulled the plug on him in three months, all of which Daly spent in a Holiday Inn near the arena.

All of a sudden, bonanza.

Daly now has TV shows, a radio show, endorsements, a book and as much outside income as he can hustle. The Piston organization, which used to beat him up in negotiations, bumped him to $850,000, making him the game’s highest-paid coach. The players asked him back, even the ones who had been baring their teeth during the season, when he was confiding that 1989-90 was his toughest season and hoping NBC would call.

Life is great. Of course, if there’s a cloud on the horizon, Daly is going to find it and pitch camp under it, too.

“I do my share of suffering,” he said. “There’s a lot of sleepless nights and there’s a lot of situations that occur internally with players that can make it very difficult.

“I have a new book out, ‘Daly Life,’ and I explain in the first chapter, I hadn’t prepared myself to give up coaching. I thought during the season, ‘It’ll be easy enough to give it up.’ But then when it came down to it--we’re in the parade and I’m looking across to Windsor (Canada) where we stay at the Hilton--I’m saying, ‘How can I let them go back over and me not be with them?’

“We have a very good team. All the things that have been built up for seven years, I didn’t want to walk away from. And I look at (NBC’s schedule) and I say, ‘I’m going to work three days until Jan. 24?’ There’s no way I could stay home and sit there with no place to go. I mean, I like the action.”

What this is, perhaps, is the Lakers-Pat Riley situation with a better bottom line, whereupon everyone falls into each other’s arms and vows to stay together.

Daly frowns. A high-profile coach leaving amid grumbling players is no happy thought.

“Just from the outside,” he said, “I’m sure there’s tension on every team with its coach, OK? What you’re trying to get is as many happy campers as possible and as many happy camp days as possible. But somebody’s gotta drive the bus, and a lot of times, people don’t like that. I also know the Lakers won 63 games and I thought Pat Riley did a sensational job of coaching. I did not like to face Pat Riley because they were extremely well coached and they were always prepared.”

To avoid a confrontation, Daly bends over backward to listen to his players, even if what they’re complaining about may be near and dear to him.

“They are brutally honest with each other,” he said, “and it starts with Isiah. And they’re brutally honest with the coaches. It’s pretty ongoing--buses, planes. It gets a little tough sometimes.”

Examples?

“I wouldn’t even want to get into it,” Daly said, laughing. “It had to do with me, obviously. What a lousy job I was doing.”

On the other hand, Daly is now among the highest-profile NBA coaches. His seven years with his present team are the most in the league, by three years.

Now, if he still has enough bend in him. . . .

“There’s a sports bar in New York called Runyon’s,” he said. “There’s a sign on the wall that says:

“ ‘How many were there?

“ ‘Which way did they go?

“ ‘How fast were they going?

“ ‘I’m their leader. I better catch them.’

“I think it’s a pretty good philosophy for an NBA coach.”

Daly doesn’t think he’s a pessimist, but “an optimist, who’s been around.”

If you think the Pistons have been successful on the court, it pales alongside Piston marketing.

The Palace, built for $80 million, on the drawing boards in the mid-’80s before the team was respectable, has 21,454 seats. None has been empty for a Piston game since it opened in 1988. With luxury box revenue, the Pistons claim the biggest gate in the league--about $500,000. The mortgage was projected to be paid in seven seasons, but the Palace is supposed to be free and clear by 1992.

A concession stand serves veal medallions.

If it sounds like a suburban strategy, you bet your yuppies it is. “Detroit” appears on Piston uniforms, but the city is used chiefly as a site for victory parades. A Detroit minister calls it “plantation basketball.”

Housing prices being what they are, the players live like princes. Salley, who’s single, has a 64-room mansion that once housed John Cardinal Dearden.

Fame, it’s . . . what?

“It’s not tough, but it’s different,” said Salley, the resident free spirit. “Before, you’d go to a movie and only a couple of people would go, ‘That’s him.’ ‘Nah.’

“Now they come and ask for autographs during the movie. It’s kinda rough.”

And all those endorsements, taking up time?

“Oh, that’s no problem,” Salley said, laughing.

How much of a longshot is the Piston quest for three consecutive championships? The Pistons note they’ve averaged 101 games for the past three seasons. The players say it felt like a short off-season.

There are more problems in paradise than autograph hunters. Vinnie Johnson had an acrimonious holdout and was forced to come in at the club’s price. Salley wants a new $2-million contract, but the club won’t discuss it.

On the other hand, the Pistons have the old Laker advantage: They dominate their conference. They can pull themselves together while the Lakers, the Trail Blazers and all those nascent powers in the West are beating each other up.

Ask them, they’ll tell you, they’re great.

“We’re not like all buddy-buddy,” Salley said. “We don’t hang in the same clique all the time. But I think we’ve got a good team.

“Isiah, he can hardly see outta one eye and he comes out and practices. Right now, he’s supposed to be sitting there and resting, and he’s on the Stairmaster for half an hour.

“People say, ‘Bill Laimbeer doesn’t have all the talent.’ Yes, he does. He can shoot. He can rebound. Joe Dumars doesn’t say a word and he just destroys people. James Edwards doesn’t say anything. He goes out there and scores. Everyone knows their role and everyone does their role.

“Nobody respected us after we beat L.A. So we came back next year and L.A. didn’t make it, did they? And we beat Portland honestly. I think it was our third championship. I think we were robbed of our first one.

“Hey, we’ve got a good team. We got the same team that was here the past two championships. We know what it’s like. We know what it takes. We like playing in June. We like being the only two teams on television besides baseball.”

That’s too far away to think about. There’s a world of hurt to lay on everyone and each other before then.

These guys will not be denied that, at least.