Daugherty Turns Racing Passion into Broadcasting.
"I was standing by the fence with my dad, who called out to him from about 30 yards away," Daugherty remembers. "He came over in that trademark hat and sunglasses and knelt down on one knee. It was No. 43 [Richard Petty]. I'll never forget it.
"Here I was, this young African-American kid, and we were just carrying on a conversation. . . . I always said that if I ever got to where I was famous, I was going to try to carry myself the same way."
Many hundred miles and a few states away from his hometown of Black Mountain, N.C., Daugherty is rekindling more memories this week at stock car racing's mecca.
Long before Daugherty's was the No. 1 overall pick in the 1986 NBA draft -- the draft best-known for the death of Len Bias -- he was a runny-nosed kid from the sticks, fetching wrenches, fixing hot rods and loving racing.
Now 41 and with basketball in his rearview mirror, Daugherty is leaning on that passion after signing a contract to be a NASCAR analyst for ESPN this year.
ESPN aired 262 NASCAR races in a 20-year period starting in 1981, but will air its first live race in six years with Saturday's Busch Series race at Daytona.
In breaking its drought, the network assembled a broadcast team that, along with Daugherty, includes host Brent Musburger and a booth team that features Jerry Punch and racing veterans Rusty Wallace and Dale Jarrett.
Daugherty will help with ESPN2's coverage of the Busch Series, and primarily will serve as an analyst on NASCAR Countdown and NASCAR Now, which debuted earlier this month as ESPN's first-ever daily program devoted solely to NASCAR.
Though he has had some association with auto racing, including being a part-owner of a Busch Series car in the late 1980s, Daugherty said he knows he has some hurdles to overcome if he is to be successful in helping bring NASCAR to a more diverse audience.
"That's the main reason I took the job actually," Daugherty says. "I can go watch racing anytime I want. And I've been on the [NASCAR] competition committee for years. But this is a great opportunity to do something different and hopefully have an impact."
Growing up in Black Mountain, a town in western North Carolina with a population of just over 4,000, Daugherty developed an affinity for racing after a few Wide World of Sports clips of NASCAR greats such as Cale Yarborough and Darrell Waltrip.
He stayed in tune with racing after taking up basketball: He selected No. 43 as his jersey number as a tribute to Petty. But it was during a trip to the Asheville (N.C.) Speedway one Friday night during his second year in the NBA in 1987 that he began to take a serious interest in actually fielding a race team.
"It was after a race that night, and this really tall guy comes walking up to me and my brothers-in-law," Robert Pressley recalls. "I didn't really watch basketball and had never seen him, but it was obvious on everybody else's faces that he was somebody famous."
Daugherty told Pressley he was a big racing fan and that he was looking to get more involved in the sport. Pressley talked with him briefly and invited him to hang out sometime.
"The next thing I know, Saturday morning comes along and here he comes pulling into my driveway," Pressley says. "We became really good buddies, and by the end of the year we started racing together [Daugherty as owner and Pressley as driver] locally and winning some local Winston regions and state championships."
The duo won a Busch Series race in 1989, and Daugherty eventually teamed with Kenny Irwin Jr. in 1997 to win two Craftsman Truck Series races.
Pressley said he thinks Daugherty's emotion will come through in the booth and that he has the unique gift of having a fan's perspective.
"I think a lot of people in racing don't explain it the way he can," Pressley says. "He's not the crew chief or ex-driver. The way he speaks is a way the race fan can understand."
When Daugherty's NBA career ended after eight seasons, he quickly moved into the broadcast booth, serving as an analyst for regional networks televising Cleveland and San Antonio games. ESPN later hired him as a college basketball analyst. That experience made Daugherty a natural fit for ESPN's racing team.
While he is an avid follower of the sport, Daugherty made the rounds at various NASCAR testing sites to show his face inside the various team garages. That's the easy part, he says.
"When I go to the race track, I run into a lot of people who know and remember me from before," Daugherty says. "But I still know there will be a lot of people surprised to see my ugly mug when they turn on their TVs. I have a lot to prove, no doubt about it. But that does not faze me at all.
"It's a huge chance that everyone is taking. I'm hoping I can do the job correctly and give them enough cause and reason for somebody else [to follow]. But when you're talking diversity, it's not rocket science. If you want African-Americans to watch, you need African-Americans. If you want Latinos, you need them on the screen."
Peter Roby, director of The Center for Sport in Society at Northeastern University, doesn't think Daugherty will have that tough a task.
"My sense is that Brad has more credibility because he grew up in that region and was a fan since he was a kid," he said. "He can't fake that. People are going to be able to judge his credibility immediately because people can tell if it is contrived or real, given their own passion for the sport."
Daugherty's passion is real. And in many ways, he is the giddy kid at Daytona for the first time. "It's too bad now, but they wouldn't have had to pay me to do this," he said.
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