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| Courtesy of Gazette.net |
What could have been?
It’s almost an over-used statement in today’s sport’s lexicon. From sport to sport, players fail to live up to expectations on the court, and by the end of their playing days they’re classified. Whether it’s because of injuries, poor play, anything, it’s always “what could have been.”
For the greatest example of all, just look back to 1986. The NBA was at the top of its game, and the star power of players like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird had the league’s popularity surging like it hadn’t in decades.
At the podium stands NBA commissioner David Stern. It's an ominous summer night at the Felt Forum in New York, New York and Stern is on stage announcing the 1986 NBA Draft's selections. With University of North Carolina center Brad Daugherty off the board as the No. 1 overall pick of the Cleveland Cavaliers, Stern approaches the podium again to announce the second pick in the draft. That pick, of course, belonged to the defending NBA Champion Boston Celtics. The NBA’s most successful franchise, the Celtics touted five future hall of fame players, including Bird himself. They were the cream of the crop and on top of the basketball world after winning their 17th NBA title just nine days earlier.
That brings us back to the draft. Dressed in a white, pinstriped tuxedo, a 22-year-old man sits in front of that stage in the Felt Forum. He looks calm, almost like a fly on the wall. The room has quieted down in anticipation of the selection of the defending champions. As a young Stern stands at the podium, he takes a breath and quickly spouts:
“The Boston Celtics select, Len Bias from the University of Maryland.”
Stern’s words cut through the room only to be overtaken by the bellowing cheers of what sounds like every fan in attendance. Walking to the stage the man shows little emotion, nothing more than a quick smirk. The crowd howls and cheers as he strides toward the stage, it looks almost like he’s been in this situation before. Finally on stage, he lets his guard down, smiling from ear to ear as he shakes hands with the commissioner and poses for photos. Little did Len Bias, or anyone else, know that would be the last time he’d be cheered like that.
We avoid saying his name because he’s almost like one of our own, someone we knew. Bias died two days after the draft of cardiac arrhythmia caused by a cocaine overdose. It was June 22, 1986 that the basketball world saw Bias as the piece that put the already great Celtics into the realm of potential greatest team ever, and it was two days later that those same people mourned him and that idea.
At six-foot-eight, 210 pounds, he was an athletic beast before the phrase had even been thought of. Aside from his 1984 ACC championship team, the teams he played on at the University of Maryland were never great, but he clawed his way from bench player to ACC Player of the Year. Nightly battles with the likes of Michael Jordan and Ralph Sampson during his tenure helped make Bias the blooming star he was. His career never resulted in any titles on the court, but averages of 23.2 points and seven rebounds per contest during his senior season of 1985-86 helped Bias to gain recognition as a first-team All-American.
Lefty Driesell, his coach at Maryland, has been quoted as saying “If Lenny Bias isn't the player of the world, I don't know who is.”
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| Courtesy of Providence Journal |
Think about that Driesell quote again. Obviously, he’s going to speak highly of his own player, but this is a guy who many believed was in the same ballpark as the great Jordan himself. Despite only being two years older than Bias, Jordan had already become the golden standard for young swingmen in the NBA, and many, including Celtics’ head coach Arnold “Red” Auerbach, thought he could be the next guy in that category.
None of that mattered though. He was the college star who was improbably drafted by the best team in the game. It was all set up to be a Celtics’ dynasty that wouldn’t die once the Bird-era ended, but transition into the Bias-era.
That transition never happened of course, and now we’re left wondering “what if?” There are so many parts of the NBA that would be vastly different had the pogo stick forward joined the Celtics. Despite their immense success in 1986, those Celtics only made it to one more NBA Finals in 1987.
During that series, Bird told Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon that Bias’ death was the “the cruelest thing I've ever heard.” That’s spoken by the man Bias was drafted to eventually replace.
However you look at those Celtics in that year’s NBA Finals, a series they lost 4-2 to the Los Angeles Lakers, you can tell that age and injury had finally caught up to them. Could Bias have been able to take some of the load off of a hobbled Bill Walton, who only played in 10 regular season games that season?
You’d think that Bias, as Georgetown University men’s basketball coach John Thompson said during that ‘86 NBA Draft, would “have a difficult time getting playing time” behind Bird during that 1987 season. He wasn’t going to unseat Bird, but with Walton missing almost the entire season, he could have been the stop gap in a season that fell just short of another title.
What about Bird? Bias’ death was something that affected him emotionally, but it was also something that affected his career in the long term. Like teammate Kevin McHale, Bird’s health began to wane as the 1980s ended, and with that so did the Celtics’ championship window. Even if Bias were to have been able to spot both of them 10 minutes a night, that could have eased the pain Bird suffered from his back and McHale
from his right foot.
In a way, the death of Bias marked the death of the Boston Celtics. They made that NBA Finals appearance in 1987, but in the following years things started going down the drain. First Bird, then McHale was forced into retirement by injury and the Celtics’ golden era was over. The Detroit Pistons took their turn atop the NBA, and then the Jordan and his Chicago Bulls took over. It was at that point you really begin to miss Bias the player.
In what was supposed to be a time where Bias took to the elite of the NBA, his former ACC adversary Jordan ruled. The Celtics averaged 28 wins in those years after Bird and McHale retired, winning a total of 168 games in the six years before 2000. Could the Celtics have avoided the follies that came with a team whose future died before it was even its present?
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| Courtesy of Contraband |
Let’s not look at it that narrowly though. What really puts this into context is what Celtics’ guard Danny Ainge told the Boston Herald in 1986 after Bias’ death. “When I heard about it, I couldn't believe it was true,” he said. “Here was a guy I was just with the night before, laughing and smiling and sipping on 7 Up. He was just on top of the world.”
That’s the reaction that links this, the idea that we all have dealt with this tragedy on the same level. It’s a realization that Bias was just a kid excited to start a new chapter of his life. He wasn’t dealing drugs, and he wasn’t anything of a gang banger, he was a 22 year old who was on the verge of playing for the greatest team in the NBA.
“He was just on top of the world” culminates the whole personal idea of Bias. Yes, he was a player who was supposed to lead the Celtics to championships, but he was more than a player – he was a person.
That’s what we lose in all of this. Sometimes we think of Bias as this theoretical piece of a championship puzzle, like he’s an ingredient needed to bake a cake. This is a person, a young man who had his entire life ahead of him, and lost it all just two nights after it really began.
I said that we avoid saying his name, and that’s because it’s piercing. The story of Bias is not told because we don’t feel comfortable with it, even 25 years after his passing. It’s still hard to come to terms with the circumstances and some refer to him as just Bias rather than Len Bias – that full name, it seems almost too personal.
Len Bias was a basketball player, a highly-decorated young player who had the talent and potential to change the way we talk about the NBA today. Len Bias was also a person, a happy and smart guy who made a costly and fatal mistake.
Although he never scored a basket in the NBA or enjoyed the life of one living out their dream career, it’s at that point we look back at the question of “what could have been?” and realize that there is no answer.
There is just the monumental legacy of a player lost too soon.
