With the exception of a wretched half-season with the Cleveland Cavaliers as a rookie NBA head coach in 1981-82, Daly was a winner everywhere he went. And, although his most notable successes came at the game's highest level, where he guided the Detroit Pistons to back-to-back NBA titles in 1989 and '90 and the original "Dream Team" of NBA superstars to Olympic gold in 1992, he was, in his heart, first and foremost a Philadelphia guy.

Born in St. Mary's, Pa., Daly made his coaching bones at the University of Pennsylvania, where he compiled a 125-38 record (74-10 against Ivy League opponents), with four Ivy titles in his six-year run from 1971 to '77. He later served as an assistant to Billy Cunningham with the 76ers and as a broadcaster for the team.

It was that Philly resiliency and iron-fist-in-a-velvet-glove approach that enabled Daly to transfer his winning ways from college, where young players are more apt to heed a coach's directives without complaint, to the NBA , where absurdly wealthy veterans with guaranteed contracts can tune out that same coach if they so choose.

"Look, I'm not dealing with just 12 men out there," Daly once said of the psychological requirements of coaching in the NBA . "I'm dealing with 12 corporations. Every guy is the head of his own major corporation. The player makes a million a year. Consequently, you're dealing with the president of his own company. Each day. Every day."

Fortunately for Daly, and for the sport he helped elevate, his rare ability to bring all those dribbling, rebounding CEOs together made him as beloved as he was respected.

"I had a good feel or sensitivity toward people," he once said.

Daly partisans rave about how this complex, seeming contradiction of a human being could orchestrate from the sideline in $1,000 suits while remaining humble and self-deprecating. The clothes horse with the perfectly coiffed hair might have suggested a glorious peacock, but he was always the same person who, in describing his hardscrabble youth to a magazine writer, once impishly said his nickname in elementary school was "Hungry."

"Tailoring covers your sins," Daly said of his penchant for dressing well.

Ed Stefanski, the 76ers' general manager and a guard for Penn when Daly was coaching the Quakers, said much of his own management style owes to lessons he learned from Daly.

"The experience I had playing for coach Daly during my four years at the University of Pennsylvania was invaluable, and I still carry with me the lessons he taught both on and off the court," Stefanski said upon learning of Daly's death. "I was always so impressed by how Chuck handled the players, alumni, administration and the press. He was such a great communicator. I wasn't surprised that he was so successful with NBA players because of his people skills."

Bill Laimbeer, the center for the "Bad Boys" teams that Daly took to the first two championships in the Pistons' previously undistinguished history, seconded Stefanski's sentiments.

"Chuck is our coach, but he is really our manager," Laimbeer said in 1990. "He manages us. He doesn't know the X's-and-O's any better than anyone else, but he keeps us going. He manages all these personalities and brings out the best in us."

Daly's first shot at being an NBA coach conceivably might have been his last. After just 93 days on the job, during which the Cavaliers went 9-32 (LeBron James had not yet been born), Daly was fired and faced an uncertain future.

A second chance to make things right came in 1983, when Daly was hired to turn around the fortunes of the Pistons, a sad-sack team that never before had so much as posted two consecutive winning seasons. But he took Detroit to the playoffs all nine seasons he was with the team, five times winning 50 or more games.

"When he first got here we were an offensive team that ran the ball up and down the court and scored a lot of points," recalled the star of those Pistons teams, Hall of Fame guard Isiah Thomas. "Chuck 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, year-by-year."

With Laimbeer and Rick Mahorn the enforcers of one of the most aggressive, physical teams ever in the NBA , the Pistons were widely despised around the league, at least by fans of opposing clubs. But little if any of that animosity touched Daly, whose classiness was as evident as the neatly folded pocket square in one of his pinstriped suits.

Michael Jordan, now the managing member of Basketball operations for the Charlotte Bobcats, was one of the megastars on the '92 Olympic juggernaut that took the gold medal in Barcelona, Spain.

"Chuck was a great leader," Jordan said upon being informed of Daly's death. "I only wish I could have played for him outside the Dream Team."

It is reflective of the esteem in which Daly was held that a steady parade of colleagues made the trip to Jupiter in his final month to share another joke, another story, another memory with their friend. Rollie Massimino and Cunningham, who live in the area, visited often, and former Penn coaches Bob Weinhauer and Jack McCloskey, ex-Penn assistant Bob Staak and onetime Temple coach Don Casey were among those who dropped in to pay their respects.

Despite his weakening condition - pancreatic cancer is the most lethal form of the dreaded disease - Daly, who retired after two seasons with the Orlando Magic in 1999, remained a coach to the end. During the NCAA Tournament, he even suggested a play Villanova might use in its upcoming game against eventual champion North Carolina. He asked Massimino, who took the Wildcats to the 1985 national title, to pass it along to current Villanova coach Jay Wright.

"Chuck was the consummate coach and teacher," said Weinhauer, who spent four years as an assistant under Daly at Penn and succeeded him as the Quakers' head coach. "For those of us who had the privilege of working with him, it was exactly that - a privilege. I know that my coaching career would have been nothing without the mentoring and guidance that he gave me at Penn and throughout my career. I was fortunate enough to be able to express that to him about a month ago, and for that I am grateful."

The NBA coaching fraternity also showed its regard for Daly this spring with each coach wearing a lapel pin emblazoned with Daly's initials.

"For the NBA coaches to wear lapel buttons as a solidarity commitment to a former coach, that's an amazing thing," Casey said. "It just gives the full level of respect they had for him."

Daly also was always willing to give back to the Philadelphia Basketball community. Temple coach Fran Dunphy recalled a letter he received from Daly when Dunphy was the Penn coach.

"He sent me a hand-written note to offer congratulations and words of encouragement," Dunphy said. "At the time, he was coaching the Pistons. I have that letter framed, and it is in a place where I keep my treasured items."