DETROIT - The FBI investigated a series of threatening letters sent to Detroit Pistons coach Chuck Daly at the height of his team’s success during the 1989-90 “Bad Boys” championship era, newly released government records show.
The 67 pages, obtained by The Associated Press as part of a Freedom of Information Act request, detail how federal agents in Detroit ordered fingerprint, handwriting and even psycholinguistic analysis as part of an effort to determine who sent the correspondences.
Daly’s teams played a punishing, in-your-face brand of defense that angered opposing players and coaches, and - based on the content of the letters examined by the FBI - fans, too.
One letter, mailed from Cleveland and postmarked April 24, 1989, arrived about two months after Cavaliers guard Mark Price suffered a concussion following a Rick Mahorn elbow and three months after Cleveland’s Brad Daugherty and Detroit’s Bill Laimbeer had an on-court fistfight.
“God made me realize that YOU, not Laimbeer, Mahorn or any of the others are the one possessed by (Satan),” the author wrote in the one-page handwritten letter addressed to “Mr. Chuck Daly.”
Daly, a Hall of Famer who died in May at the age of 78, gave the letter to team officials, who in turn notified NBA security in New York.
Federal agents interviewed Daly and team personnel and submitted the letter for various tests. A psycholinguistic analysis determined the author likely “has had previous psychiatric hospitalizations and/or is currently on outpatient status,” but lacked “the capacity to carry out any form of planned action.”
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