Growing up in Black Mountain, N.C., Brad Daugherty was always devoted to the Tar Heel State’s twin passions: college basketball and car racing. Growing up, he used to play basketball during the day, and then head over in the evening to his friend’s race shop, where he often worked past midnight. And he kept his hands in racing—enjoying it as an off-season pursuit—even during his NBA career with the Cavaliers. Talking to the seven-footer today, it’s hard to tell if he was more excited to be the No. 1 pick in the 1986 draft or to win the Daytona 500 as an owner in 2023. Not only is Daugherty a co-owner of Hyak Motorsports, but he is also an analyst for both NBA and NASCAR broadcasts on NBC. Old habits die hard.
It’s hardly a surprise that when Michael Jordan—his teammate at UNC—was thinking about becoming an owner of a NASCAR team, one of the calls he made was to Daugherty, whose car is driven in the Cup series by Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Jordan eventually teamed up with current Cup driver Denny Hamlin to form 23XI Racing, whose colors are carried in the Cup series by drivers Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick. More than 30 years after Daugherty and Jordan battled it out on NBA hardwood, they are racing wheel-to-wheel in NASCAR.
