Pat Riley was walking out of Chuck Daly’s hospital room in 2009, got to the doorway and turned around for another word from his longtime colleague, rival and friend. Riley remembers it vividly. “He looked at me, I looked back at him for a pause and he just sort of said, ‘I’ll see you later,’ ” said Riley, the Hall of Fame coach and now president of the Miami Heat. “I’ll never forget it. That was the last time I saw him.” Riley and Daly were rivals as coaches, eventually became close friends and now they’re linked once again. The National Basketball Coaches Association selected Riley as this year’s recipient of the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award, which commemorates the former Detroit coach’s life in basketball and his “standard of integrity, competitive excellence and tireless promotion” of the game.
