Despite being a five-time NBA All-Star and Cleveland Cavaliers great, Brad Daugherty was never able to reach basketball’s mountaintop. He got to the Eastern Conference finals just once, and his former North Carolina Tar Heel teammate Michael Jordan’s dynasty would end up getting in the way of his ambition. But now, some 30 years later, Daugherty can now lay claim to one of sports’ greatest prizes from one of his life’s great passions.
Daugherty won his first Daytona 500 as a car owner this past Sunday. He’s the co-owner of JTG Daugherty Racing and the No. 47 Chevrolet driven to Victory Lane by Ricky Stenhouse Jr. The win was the culmination of a lifelong passion for Daugherty: He wore No. 43 on the Cavaliers as a nod to Richard Petty, who was his boyhood hero growing up in Black Mountain, N.C. He attended races at New Asheville Speedway, where he would become close personal friends with future NASCAR Cup Series driver Robert Pressley as well as his car owner, even as his basketball career was on the rise.
All of that led Daugherty to victory in the Daytona 500, where he became the first Black car owner to ever win The Great American Race alongside co-owners and longtime business partners Jodi and Tad Geschickter. Recent eye surgery forced Daugherty to leave Daytona International Speedway the morning of the race and watch from home, but he shared his thoughts and initial reaction to winning the 500 with NASCAR.com.
“I sat there for a second. And I was like … We just won the Daytona 500. I realized I was by myself, but I was like, ‘OK, this is really great, because you’re talking to yourself,'” Daugherty said. “And then I just went nuts. So then my phone started ringing — people from NASCAR calling me, the team was calling me … everybody. I was just like, this is unbelievable. This is an unbelievable moment in NASCAR history, for a little race team at Harrisburg, and for a team that just doesn’t quit.”
Daugherty’s standing as a member of a select fraternity of African-American racers was a major part of his Daytona 500…
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