University of North Carolina Athletics
Brad Daugherty Anything But Soft
May 16, 2001 | Men's Basketball
May 16, 2001
by Rick Brewer
rad Daugherty probably winces every time he heads the word "soft," regardless of how its being used.
He heard and read it too many times when some people were describing him in his days as a college and even professional basketball player.
Well, any coach will take a "soft" 6-11, 245-pound center who can run, shoot, rebound and play defense like Daugherty if one could be found.
There are very few of them around these days.
That notion of being soft may have developed during Daugherty's freshman year at North Carolina. He was just 16 years old at the time and, admittedly, felt a little out of place,
Carolina had won the NCAA championship the previous year and there was a large cast of returning players off that team, including starters Sam Perkins, Matt Doherty and Michael Jordan.
"There were many times when I didn't know what was going on in practice," Daugherty said recently. "I knew there was going to be a lot to learn, but I had no idea how much until I got here.
"But, I knew the reputation Coach (Dean) Smith and Coach (Bill) Guthridge had in helping develop big men. I felt this was the place for me and I was certainly right in that."
That belief in the Tar Heel program paid off with Daugherty winning first-team All-America honors as a senior and being the number one selection in the 1986 NBA draft. He also learned the fundamentals here he would need for a successful, if unfortunately short, professional career.
It also pays off in another way this week when he is inducted into the state of North Carolina's Sports Hall of Fame.
Few would have predicted this kind of success for Daugherty during his first two years at Owen High School in his hometown of Black Mountain, N.C.
Like two older brothers he had taken tests to skip the eighth grade. He was intelligent and his mother saw no reason to hold him back. That's why he was always a year younger than his classmates. Although he enjoyed all sports, his favorite was football and he served as the team's student manager in his freshman year at Owen. But, Basketball Coach Bill Burrow saw the 6-3 Daugherty and got him to come out for basketball as a sophomore where he made the junior varsity.
However, by the start of his junior year he had grown to 6-10 and that's when he really began to concentrate on the sport.
"It's strange," he remembered. "I didn't go through growing pains. I did have a period where I slept a lot, but doctors said that was normal when you're growing like that."
Daugherty arrived on the Tar Heel campus with the NCAA championship team missing James Worthy on the front line. After consulting with Smith, Worthy had left school a year early and been the top pick in the NBA draft.
But, Daugherty wasn't ready to fill that open spot in the Tar Heel lineup.
"I was just too inconsistent," he said. "I've always hated people talking about how young I was when I started college and the NBA. But, in retrospect, I was 16 and there were some guys in our league who were 22 or 23. I didn't have the attention span or the work habits which more experienced players had.
"Plus, I was a big guy who had been used to scoring. I didn't understand why we worked so much on setting screens, learning different defenses, taking charges or moving without the ball. And Coach Smith wasn't the kind of guy to constantly pat you on the back. Practice was a true learning experience and everybody was treated equally, from Sam and Michael to freshmen like me."
In his first game as a freshman he scored nine points in 21 minutes as Carolina was upset by St. John's. His first double-figure scoring game came in the third game of the year--a triple overtime win over Tulane. He had 11 points and seven rebounds in 30 minutes of action.
His first start came in the season's 11th game, a 73-58 win over Missouri in the finals of the Rainbow Classic in Hawaii. He only played 12 minutes, scoring four points and grabbing two rebounds. But, his presence in the lineup allowed Perkins to move to power forward, Doherty to small forward and Jordan to the backcourt. It gave Smith a starting group he preferred-- two big men instead of the undersized lineup he had been using. Perkins had 24 points in that game and Jordan 19.
Two games later Daugherty had his first double-figure scoring game as a starter with 15 and nine rebounds against Syracuse. However, in the Atlantic Coast Conference opener against Maryland, he had only a single point and five rebounds.
But, he played well in a wild 101-96 shootout at Virginia. He had six points and 11 rebounds. His presence continued to create problems for the opposition as Perkins had a career-high 36. In addition, he and Perkins played well defensively against Ralph Sampson, despite his 17 points and 12 rebounds.
He finished his freshman year averaging 8.2 points a game and shooting 55.8 percent from the field. Those numbers increased all four years he was at Carolina. In his All-America senior season, he scored 20.2 points a game, shot 64.8 percent from the floor and averaged 9.0 rebounds. Showing his consistency, he scored in double figures in 32 of his team's 34 games. But, it was his defense that constantly drew praise from Smith.
Although he had come to Chapel Hill with a good shooting touch for a big man, he developed into an outstanding low post player. With his size and strength, he was virtually impossible to move once he set up inside. It was the combination of all those skills that made him the top pick in the NBA draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers following his senior season.
In an eight-year pro career he averaged 19.0 points a game and 9.5 rebounds. He shot 53.2 percent from the floor and 74.7 percent from the free throw line, marks rarely seen by other centers then or now. In 41 NBA playoff games he averaged 19.1 points and 10.2 rebounds. He was generally considered the best passing big man in the professional game.
He was selected to the NBA All-Star Game five times. In 1992 he was named third-team All-NBA behind David Robinson and Patrick Ewing.
But, he had to sit out the last part of the 1994 season and missed all of the two following years with back problems. He underwent surgery to have two herniated disks removed in 1994, hoping to ease the pain and free him to return to the court. But, doctors told him he needed to give up the sport--that his back could not take so much running.
Daugherty now does television work for ABC and ESPN. He also was heavily involved in the fund-raising for the Sonja Hanes Stone Black Cultural Center here on campus.
Labels may sometimes stick in peoples' minds, but anyone who considers Brad Daugherty "soft" never had to face him on the court. He was a dynamic player who certainly deserves his Hall of Fame honor.
