Len Bias: 25 years later

Note: This was written five years ago and it seems like a good idea to rework it again given it has been exactly a quarter century since Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose.  Twenty-five years …

Twenty-five years.

Think about all that can happen in the space of 25 years. Friends come and go, and milestones are recognized and passed. Sometimes, even, lifetimes are lived, and always it seems like everything had happened in just a fleeting moment. Blink and it’s gone.

Time marches on. It always does.

In sports, 25 years is more than a lifetime and longer than an era. It’s forever and the number of players that every franchise in every sport has seen make through multiple decades of service can be counted on one hand.

It’s been exactly 25 years since Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose (June 19, 1986) less than two days after he had been selected by the Boston Celtics as the No. 2 overall pick in the NBA Draft. Bias was the great college basketball player from the University of Maryland, but more than that he was billed as the next great Boston Celtics All-Star. He had once-in-a-lifetime talent and was headed for a team that had Hall of Famers like Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Dennis Johnson as well as Robert Parish and Danny Ainge, so clearly Bias had the world by the tail.

Only he didn’t.

Bias’ death was at the time, according to Celtics great Larry Bird, “The cruelest thing ever.”

It certainly seemed that way at the time. With the aid of time and distance we learned that Bias and his university had a several other significant problems and the cocaine abuse was just the tip of the iceberg. Bias had been flunking out of school and was known to keep company with a few unsavory characters, including Brian Tribble, the convicted cocaine dealer who is said to have supplied the dose that killed him.

Ultimately, Tribble was cleared of any wrongdoing in Bias’ death, but Maryland coach Lefty Driesell’s reputation remains sullied in the aftermath of his star players’ death. Meanwhile, we’ve learned that Bias wasn’t exactly a novice cocaine user either. It as Bias’ leased sports car undercover cops saw cruising a notorious drug neighborhood on Montana Avenue in Washington, D.C. Later, Tribble admitted that he and Bias were recreational cocaine users, but no one knew.

How could we? Bias was in that rarefied air of the greatest players to come through a new era of basketball. His contemporary, Michael Jordan, had just won the rookie of the year award and seemed poised to renew a rivalry with Bias for years to come.

It was perfect. The story was already written.

Actually, in 25 years there has been a lot more damage and disgrace than growth, but that’s the way it goes when a star is extinguished long before his time.

And “star” is the only way to describe Bias. He was to be the next great star of the NBA – not like Karl Malone or Charles Barkley, who were also on the way up at the time – but instead like the guys who only needed one name.

Michael, Magic, Larry…

And Lenny.

Not in this lifetime.

For those who grew up in the ‘80s and lived for basketball the way the devout love the gospels, Len Bias was The Truth. Not privy to all of the scouting reports or the 24-hour inundation of sports and analysis, we only had one player to compare Bias to, and that was the guy from Carolina who was the ACC Player of the Year before him.

Comparisons are always odious, especially when everyone knows who Michael Jordan is and what he accomplished, and Bias, amongst today’s live-for-the-now sports mindset, is largely forgotten. Sure, us newly-minted old-timers mark time by Bias’ death and can recall in great detail the way the air smelled or how the sun shined the moment when we heard the news, but there are kids who love the game just as much as we did who never knew what Bias did or who we was.

Of course there is a legacy. As collegiate players, Bias, Patrick Ewing and David Robinson remain the best I have ever seen. Like Jordan, Bias could play forward and guard, but at the same age, Lenny was a far better shooter. He also was stronger and meaner and a more explosive leaper.

People always talked about Jordan and his competitiveness and how he forced his teammates to become better players. It’s all part of his legend. But Bias played with a nastiness that made Jordan seem meek. All Bias highlights include the game at Carolina where he scored a basket then swiped the inbounds pass and in one motion dunked it while ducking his head beneath the rim. His other move was a devastating baseline jumper that not only was impossible to block like Kareem’s skyhook, but it also was like money in the bank. That baseline shot just carved out opponents’ hearts.

Sadly, though, no one remembers anything about the way Len Bias played. They just remember the end and the aftermath. It’s one thing to be the most infamous cautionary tale in sports, but to also be the impetus for sometimes draconian and knee-jerk drug laws just might be the hardest truth of all of it.

But not the hardest tragedy because four years later Jay Bias, Len’s younger brother, was shot and killed at a shopping mall when a jealous man thought he was flirting with his girlfriend. Could you believe two tragedies for one family—one more absurd than the other?

Still, long before Sept. 11, or the O.J. circus, and a handful of years before the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union crumbled; Len Bias’ death was people of my age’s Kennedy Assassination. I can still remember it like it was yesterday. I remember where I was standing when my mom and sister came running outside to tell me the news. I remember how the sky looked and how the sun felt. I remember the way the evergreen bush next to the driveway felt when I touched it and pulled a little red berry off of it.

I remember the local TV sportscaster delivering the news in his attempt at solemnity opposed to his typical wacky sports guy shtick. I remember mowing the grass in the backyard and wondering whether any one would ever wear No. 30 for the Celtics again.

I remember the drive home with my mom, sister and grandmother from Rehoboth Beach the day before and hearing the news in the Rehoboth Mall that he had been selected with the second pick in the NBA Draft. I remember Red Auerbach’s creepy laugh beneath those oversized glasses when his Celtics and the Sixers were the only two who hadn’t been called in that year’s draft lottery. Sure, the Celtics ended up with the No. 2 pick behind the Sixers, but Red knew Harold Katz would figure out a way to mess it up.

Who could have guessed that Jeff Ruland ended up more productive for the 76ers than Len Bias for the Celtics?

Twenty-five years later we wonder where the time went and how to make the news sting a little less. Twenty-five years can seem like an eternity or a blink of an eye. But make no mistake, 22 years is far too young to die.

And 25 years is too long to wonder, what if…

Dennis Rodman could have been better

It’s kind of ironic to note that Dennis Rodman was a second-round pick of the 1986 NBA Draft. The fascinating part about this that in the most doomed draft in history, some unknown dude from some college called Southeastern Oklahoma State University would go on to have the best NBA career.

To look at the 1986 NBA Draft in the moment was to see the deepest and most talented collection of players assembled at one specific time and place. And yet between the death, personal destruction, addiction and the misplaced expectation, the entire group seems linked as if some sort of perverse Shakespearean tragedy.

How could so much go so wrong for so many people?

Just look at the list of names of young men who were headed for the NBA during June of 1986. At the top of the list were Brad Daugherty and Len Bias. Daugherty, of course, was supposed to be drafted by the 76ers, but, as the legend goes, former team owner Harold Katz had the No. 1 pick over to house to play some hoops on his indoor court and thought he was, “soft.” Because of that, Katz traded the rights to Daugherty, Moses Malone and Terry Catledge, the draft picks that turned out to be Georgetown/UNLV product Anthony Jones and Harvey Grant, only to get back Roy Hinson, Jeff Ruland and Cliff Robinson.

It very easily was the worst day of trading by the Sixers, ever, and that’s before we figure in the fact that Daugherty averaged 19 points and 10 rebounds a game for his entire career.

The story of Bias, of course, we all know all too well. Of course the one part of Bias’ death that is often overlooked in the long form pieces and documentaries is that without him, the Celtics were in disarray for a solid decade. Moreover, his death also sacrificed significant chunks of the careers of Larry Bird and Kevin McHale, whose declines came much quicker than if they had Bias to lean on.  

There were others, too. The No. 3 pick, Chris Washburn, lasted just 72 NBA games over three seasons and struggled with addiction for more than a decade. Big East superstars Pearl Washington and Walter Berry turned out to be casualties of the east-coast hype machine, while top 10 selections Kenny Walker, Roy Tarpley, Brad Sellers and Johnny Dawkins, had middling careers in the league, at best.

Even some of the players drafted behind Rodman were met with tragedy. Drazen Petrovic was killed in a car accident on the Autobahn nearly a decade before his posthumous induction into the Hall of Fame. Three years ago, Portland’s big man Kevin Duckworth died of congestive heart failure at age 44.

The 1986 Draft was so bizarre that one of its best standouts, Arvydas Sabonis, had to wait for Glasnost in order to make his way to America almost 10 years after he was taken as the last pick of the first round. By the time he got to the league he was already at the end of his prime and had many wondering what might have been.

But then that’s the overreaching theme of the entire mix from ’86.

So this was the backdrop from which Dennis Rodman entered the league. Moreover, given the demons he battled off the court it’s amazing that the one player from that draft to play a complete career and then gain induction to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame is The Worm, Dennis Rodman.

According to reports as well as Rodman himself, the 6-foot-7 defensive and rebounding specialist got the votes needed amongst the 12 finalists to gain enshrinement. Word is Tex Winter also will be a Hall of Famer, along with Chris Mullin and former Sixers player and coach, Maurice Cheeks. Philadelphia University head coach and shooting guru, Herb Magee, was one of the 12 finalists. Considering Magee has more wins in NCAA basketball than any coach in history, he has a pretty strong shot to get in, too.

The official announcement is scheduled for noon on Monday.

Nevertheless, the election of Rodman is what most folks will talk and debate about until his enshrinement. He’s one of those players whose career stats both work for and against him. Sure, he led the league in rebounding average seven times, grabbed more than 13 per game over 14 seasons and owns five of the best eight rebounding seasons in the modern era, with the other three posted by Hall of Famers Malone, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Elvin Hayes. Rodman was the defensive player of the year twice, all-defense first team seven times, a two-time All-Star and a five-time NBA champ.

If defense, rebounding and championships matter, Rodman’s penchant for doing the dirty work should be enough to get him in. With Detroit and Chicago, teams that were contenders with strong leaders, i.e., Isiah Thomas and Michael Jordan, Rodman was the perfect teammate and ultimate team player.

Rodman was not an all-around player, though. He was a specialist on one side of the court, but when his team had the ball he was largely useless except for fighting for offensive boards. He scored little more than seven points per game and had one season where he averaged double-digits in scoring. In the rare chance that Rodman actually had to shoot a jumper, his form looked like a catapult or slingshot than a pure, smooth jump shot.

Worse, there were two seasons with San Antonio where Rodman’s antics on the floor may have sabotaged the team’s chances at a title. It wasn’t until the Spurs got rid of Rodman and rebuilt the roster—and drafted Tim Duncan—that they won three titles in seven seasons.

“He was annoying,” Spurs teammate and Hall-of-Famer, David Robinson said. “He just would be in your shorts all the time, always there with you. He was a very, very strong guy—a little bit undersized at times, but he never let it stop him. He had relentless energy, and he had no fear.”

It was also around that time when Rodman began his makeover. In fact, he was one of the first NBA players to turn his body into a canvass of tattoos, a now ubiquitous fashion trend in pro sports. He also piled up the technical fouls at an alarming rate and often led the league in that category until Rasheed Wallace came around. But not even Wallace was as combustible as Rodman, who earned fines and suspensions for head-butting a ref, kicking a cameraman, and taking off from the Bulls before a game in the NBA Finals in order to wrestle with Hulk Hogan.

There was even some sort of fling with Madonna.

“I just took the chance to be my own man … I just said: ‘If you don’t like it, kiss my ass.’ Most people around the country, or around the world, are basically working people who want to be free, who want to be themselves. They look at me and see someone trying to do that... I'm the guy who's showing people, hey, it's all right to be different. And I think they feel: ‘Let’s go and see this guy entertain us.’”

But unlike his gritty work on the floor and glass, Rodman’s sideshow antics and outbursts seemed contrived and even a bit phony. Despite his rebellious image, Rodman seemed used up and on some sort of money grab with books and appearances in wedding dresses or shotgun marriages in Vegas. People who didn’t know anything about basketball knew who Rodman was and assumed he was better than he really was because of all the media exposure. In reality, it was an act.

It seemed like more than anything Rodman needed attention—maybe even more so than something substantive.

Still, when his head was right and Thomas or Jordan had him focused, Rodman won big games. During the 1996 Finals, he could have been the series MVP by grabbing 20 and 19 rebounds in games 2 and 6 with a record 11 offensive boards in both games. After the series, Seattle’s coach George Karl said Rodman won those two games all by himself.

It would be nice if Rodman is most remembered for how he played or the fact that he grabbed more available rebounds than any player in NBA history. He could play when he wasn’t distracted or had some other outside motivation and distractions. When he had his uniform No. 10 retired by the Pistons last weekend, Rodman admitted he could have been better. During the press conference at the ceremony in Detroit, Rodman said he “didn’t deserve to have the number retired” since he could have done so much more.

“I didn't fully understand the value I had for this organization,” he said.

Was he valuable enough to warrant election to the Hall of Fame? Apparently so.

Could he have been even better?

Definitely so.

Older dead than alive

I saw the sentence on ESPN.com this afternoon and it made me shudder: Len Bias has been dead longer than he was alive.

Yes, it's been 22 years since Bias died shortly after being drafted by the Boston Celtics. Ironically, it took the Celtics the same amount of time -- 22 years -- to win another championship. When Bias died, Charles Barkley said it would set back the Celtics franchise at least 10 years. Who would have known that Chuck would have been just half correct.

Nevertheless, I've waxed on in the past about being a teenager and hearing the news about Bias' death while mowing our lawn in Lancaster, Pa. It truly was one of those where-were-you-when moments for me, especially since I believed then that Len Bias was the best college basketball player I ever saw.

With the passage of time and the fact that everything seemed bigger when I was younger, that believe still holds true.

Anyway, the ESPN story about Bias by Michael Weinreb is quite compelling. I found the grave photos particularly interesting because the site has become a pilgrimage area for some. In fact, Bias and his brother Jay are buried next to each other just over the Anacostia River from the Nationals new ballpark in the Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in Suitland, Md.

There is also a documentary due out on Bias this year by filmmaker Kirk Fraser. Word is it made waves at the Sundance Film Festival.

More: Kirk Fraser - Len Bias Documentary Michael Weinreb - The Day Innocence Died (ESPN)

Another year goes by

Today is the 21st anniversary of the death of Len Bias. Last year I wrote a longer post about it which was to be published elsewhere, but Brett Myers went out and got arrested in Boston in a case that we remember all too well.

Anyway, I still maintain that Len Bias was the best college basketball player I had ever seen. Better than Michael Jordan, Ralph Sampson, David Robinson, James Worthy, Patrick Ewing, Pearl Washington, Chris Mullin or any of those guys for UNLV.

Anyone who says Bias wasn’t a bigger, stronger, meaner and more polished Michael Jordan, just doesn’t know any better.

Said The Washington Post’s Michael Wilbon: “I saw great players from both the ACC and Big East every night. Jordan. Ewing. Mullin. Sampson. Later on, David Robinson. But Bias was the most awesome collegiate player of that bunch. That jumper was so pure. I mean, Michael Jordan, at that time, would have killed for that jumper. And Bias was 2 ½ inches taller.”

Charles Barkley: “I'd have played against him for the next 14 years. I would have been in my prime and he would have been in his. I'll never forget what he looked like. He was a ‘Wow!’ player. When Maryland played and was on television, I watched. It was like, ‘I need to watch this guy; I'll be seeing him real soon.’ . . . It was just shocking. Thing is, cocaine was huge then. My brother had been in and out of rehab. . . . It was a popular drug at the time. And guys I was playing against, like John Lucas and Michael Ray Richardson and John Drew had done cocaine. I was thinking: ‘What the hell is up with this cocaine? I should try this once to see what it was all about.’ Then, we heard the reports were that Bias only used it once . . . that it was his first time. When I heard that, it scared me to death . . . scared the daylights out of me. It scared me into not trying it even once, not going anywhere near it.”

Twenty one years and it still seems like it was just yesterday.

***
Inevitably, when the Detroit Tigers and manager Jim Leyland arrived in Philadelphia for last weekend’s series, the comparisons between the two skippers would crop up. I suppose the Tigers appearance in last October’s World Series didn’t quell the argument regarding Charlie Manuel and Leyland in some circles because people talked about it.

Leyland, of course, wasn’t too interested in talking about losing out on the Phillies’ gig to Charlie, telling reporters curtly, “Don’t go there,” when the subject was broached last Friday.

Former Phillie Placido Polanco wasn’t too jazzed about comparing Charlie and Leyland either, saying, “What are you trying to say? That Charlie's no good? When you lose, it's the manager's fault, but when you win, the players play good. You have to give the manager credit, but the players have to make the plays.”

Polanco is definitely right about that, but that’s the way it goes in baseball. The manager is always looked at by the fans as some sort of Svengali, when in reality the best managers are smart enough to know to stay out of the way.

Besides, skippering a team like the Detroit Tigers doesn’t exactly take a whole lot of innovation. All Leyland has to do is fill out the lineup card with Polanco, Gary Sheffield, Magglio Ordonez and the rest of that murderers’ row or tell one of his lights’ out young pitcher to throw a no-hitter or shutout. In that regard the strategy showdown between Charlie and Leyland never really manifested.

How hard is it to manage a bunch of home runs?

Regardless, Manuel may have out-smarted himself when he decided to yank starting pitcher Adam Eaton in the seventh inning of Sunday’s game with Gary Sheffield coming to the plate. To that point in the game Eaton had a two-run lead and had just allowed a pair of the six hits he yielded. But instead of letting his starting pitcher with just 91 pitches on the odometer try to wiggle out of his mess, Manuel turned to his bullpen three different times to get the final two outs of the innings.

When it was all finished, the two-run lead had become a three-run deficit and the sit-back-and-let-it-unfold-style of managing that had marked the series blew up like one of those rubber cigars from the cartoons.

Worse, the second-guessing started.

That statistics and sabermetric folks have crunched a lot of numbers to make them prove a lot of different things about the game, but it might be worth it to see what the stats show in regard to meddlesome managers. Certainly Manuel has been criticized for being too loyal and leaving players in spots when they have long surpassed their effectiveness. Pat Burrell springs to mind in that regard.

However, after spending most of the first part of the season doing all he could to avoid his bullpen, Manuel wasn’t shy about using four pitchers to get out of the seventh on Sunday.

Go figure.

***
From White Sox skipper Ozzie Guillen on Polanco:

“He's the heart of that club. I don't know why the hell the Phillies let him go.

“To me, the key to that team is Polanco. He's clutch. He's one of the most underrated players in the game. People don't know how good he is.”

Ask Ed Wade about David Bell if you’re looking for the answer on that one.

***
If you’re watching the Indians and Phillies play this week it looks as if Cleveland is treating some familiar faces quite well. David Dellucci, Jason Michaels, Aaron Fultz, Roberto Hernandez and Paul Byrd have all landed with the Indians and have made big contributions to the leaders of the AL Central.

Meanwhile, Joe Borowski is pleased that he ended up with the Indians instead of the Phillies.

***
If you're in Cleveland and looking for a good place to unwind after the Phillies game and don't mind taking a little drive and/or want to avoid the tourist traps and post-frat boy joints on The Flats, try The Barking Spider out near Case Western Reserve University.

I spent a week there one night about a decade ago.

Anyway, it's approximately five miles from the ballpark...

***
Quick observation about the U.S. Open:

How about the dichotomy in the trio of leaders down the stretch? Jim Furyk looked lean and mean and looked just like he did when he was playing hoops for Manheim Township. Tiger Woods looked like a guy who spent all of his free time in the gym and was not to shy about showing off his newly sculpted physique.

And then there was champion Angel Cabrera who chain-smoked his way through the back nine and stopped at the turn for a couple of hotdogs and a beer.

Here’s my prediction – Furyk and Tiger will be amongst the top 10 golfers in the world for the next decade while Cabrera is never heard from again.

Either that or he joins the John Daly wing of the PGA Tour.

Tomorrow: Airports, summer travelling, Bobby Abreu, Jim Furyk and Floyd Landis.

Twenty Years

Twenty years. Think about all that can happen in the space of twenty years. Friends come and go, and milestones are recognized and passed. Sometimes, even, lifetimes are lived, and always it seems like everything had happened in just a fleeting moment.

Time marches on. It always does.

In sports, 20 years is an Era. The number of players that every franchise in every sport has seen make through multiple decades of service can be counted on one hand.

For the Phillies, Mike Schmidt played 18 seasons. That was the most of any Philadelphia player. Think about it, in 20 years, the Phillies have made the playoffs once and the city’s major sports teams have brought home… well, there haven’t been any parades for championships. But you get the point; a lot can happen in 20 years.

Levity aside, it’s been exactly 20 years since Len Bias – the great college basketball player from the University of Maryland – died of a cocaine overdose (June 19, 1986) less than two days after he had been selected as the No. 2 pick in the NBA Draft. Billed as the next great Boston Celtics All-Star, Bias had the world by the tail.

Bias’ death was, according to Celtics great Larry Bird, “The cruelest thing ever.”

It certainly seemed that way at the time. With the aid of time and distance we learned that Bias and his university had a several other significant problems and the cocaine abuse was just the tip of the iceberg. Bias had been flunking out of school and was known to keep company with a few unsavory characters, including Brian Tribble, the convicted cocaine dealer who is said to have supplied the dose that killed him.

Ultimately, Tribble was cleared of any wrongdoing in Bias’ death, but Maryland coach Lefty Driesell’s reputation remains sullied in the aftermath of his star players’ death. Actually, in 20 years there has been a lot more damage and disgrace than growth, but that’s the way it goes when a star is extinguished long before his time.

And “star” is the best way to describe Bias. He was to be the next great star of the NBA – not like Karl Malone or Charles Barkley, his contemporaries – but instead like the guys who only needed one name.

Michael, Magic, Larry.

And Len.

Not in this lifetime.

For those who grew up in the ‘80s and lived for basketball the way the devout love the gospels, Len Bias was The Truth. Not privy to all of the scouting reports or the 24-hour inundation of sports and analysis, we only had one player to compare Bias to, and that was the guy from Carolina who was the ACC Player of the Year before him.

Comparisons are always odious, especially when everyone knows who Michael Jordan is and what he accomplished, and Bias, amongst today’s live-for-the-now sports mindset, is largely forgotten. Yet as collegiate players, Bias, Patrick Ewing and David Robinson remain the best I have ever seen. Like Jordan, Bias could play forward and guard, but at the same age, Lenny was a better shooter, stronger and meaner.

People always talked about Jordan and his competitiveness and how he forced his teammates to become better players. It’s all part of his legend. But Bias played with a nastiness that made Jordan seem meek. Then there was that devastating, baseline jumper that just carved an opponents’ heart out.

Sadly, no one remembers anything about the way Len Bias played. They just remember the end.

Long before Sept. 11, or the O.J. circus, and a handful of years before the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union crumbled; Len Bias’ death was people of my age’s Kennedy Assassination. I can still remember it like it was yesterday. I remember where I was standing when my mom and sister came running outside to tell me the news. I remember how the sky looked and how the sun felt. I remember the way the evergreen bush next to the driveway felt when I touched it and pulled a little red berry off of it.

I remember the local TV sportscaster delivering the news in his attempt at solemnity opposed to his typical wacky sports guy shtick. I remember mowing the grass in the backyard and wondering whether any one would ever wear No. 30 for the Celtics again.

I remember the drive home with my mom, sister and grandmother from Rehoboth Beach the day before and hearing the news in the Rehoboth Mall that he had been selected with the second pick in the NBA Draft. I remember Red Auerbach’s creepy laugh when his Celtics and the Sixers were the only two who hadn’t been called in that year’s draft lottery. Sure, the Celtics ended up with the No. 2 pick behind the Sixers, but Red knew Harold Katz would figure out a way to mess it up.

Who could have guessed that Jeff Ruland ended up more productive for the 76ers than Len Bias for the Celtics?

Twenty years later we wonder where the time went and how to make the news sting a little less. Twenty years can seem like an eternity or a blink of an eye. But make no mistake, 22 years is far too young to die.