Archives
2:14:00 PM EDT
Feeling Frustrated
Twenty Years Ago Today
When you're 17 and have just graduated from high school you can do anything in the world. The first thing I did was go to beach week. Well, actually, beach weeks. I came home for one day of recuperation and laundry between the two trips. The morning when I was home I was awakened by the phone. It was my boy Doug Hemmig. He knew I was tired and hungover and wouldn't usually bother calling before noon. Disoriented I answered and mumbled "Hello." He told me Len Bias was dead. I said OK and hung up. Then about two seconds later I shot up out of bed. I called his number as quickly as I could. When he answered I almost yelled "What the hell did you just say?" He said it again and my life changed.
The phone kept ringing all day. After a while I stopped answering. I didn't know what to do. I spent most of the day staring at the wall. I had a bunch of Bias pictures hanging in my bedroom. Sometimes I'd look at them, but most of the time I was focused on the blank spaces. Trying to figure out what the hell was happening.
I was a huge Terps fan. I grew up in Rockville, MD. His four years at Maryland were my four years in high school. He was a god to us. He was hope. He made Maryland matter nationally. And he brought back all the fears Terps fans had. We were never quite good enough. Never got respect. I still can't believe the Wooden Award went to Walter Berry instead of Lenny. I still can't believe Red Auerbach duped Cleveland into taking Brad Daugherty first over Lenny. And I still can't believe he never played with Bird, McHale and the Celtics.
``In my time as a coach, there have been two players that were above the rest in my mind. One was Michael Jordan and the other was Len Bias." -- Mike Krzyzewski
He played before SportsCenter dominated the universe so he never got the attention he deserved. But because of the way he played, we almost created our own SportsCenter just for him. I taped (on Beta) most of the games he played in his senior season at Maryland. The guys would watch the games at my house and before tip-off (and during most commercials) we'd watch highlights. Every tape was cued to an amazing play. We watched them so much that we knew Mike Patrick's play-by-play calls by heart. Twenty years later I still do. I remember the sequence against Virginia where he blocked four shots on one possession. The last leading to a fast break that ended with an alley-oop to Lenny.
"He (Keith Gatlin) has the best assist-to-turnover ratio in the ACC, you don't see him make the bad pass very often. Here's Polynice, swatted away by Bias...
Polynice again, blocked again. Here's Baxter. What a sequence. Holy cow! Alley oop! OOOOOOHHHH!"
And I'll never forget when he single-handedly beat North Carolina, the Tar Heels' first loss ever in the Dean Dome.
"Bias from outside and he got it. Len Bias with 29."
"Oh my!" (Dan Bonner)
"And he makes the steal and a jam. What a play by Bias. Holy cow!"
It's been twenty years now, but I still can't let go. Every few months I'll Google his name and read some articles. I'll go find some videos to remember what it was like to watch him change a game. Sometimes it makes me feel sick. Sometimes I want to cry. Sometimes I watch with a huge grin, just trying to live in the moments (moments now two decades past). But usually I just feel numb. I wonder what might have been and why it happened.
When you're 17 you feel invincible. That day I didn't. I've done many stupid things since then but cocaine is not one of them. I'm not saying I would have if Lenny didn't die, but I knew that after that day there was zero chance that I was ever going to try it. And I'm not the only that had that reaction. Articles have been written about how it changed the way America thought about drugs and it even changed legends of the game like Charles Barkley:
"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."
I like to think his death saved lives. Tons of people stayed away from drugs because if they could kill someone like Lenny, they could kill anyone. But people are still doing drugs and kids still die in the streets every day. Maybe he helped some, but not nearly enough.
In the end, he was a basketball player. And that's plenty. He was amazing to watch. He dominated the ACC and smiled the whole time. I don't know how I'll feel when I watch the videos of him on the court tonight, but I hope I'm smiling. I know he would be.
Michael Wilbon column from the anniversary
Scoop Jackson explains why Bias is a martyr
Bob Ryan from what would have been Bias' 40th birthday
Written by dustyseafoam Blog about this entry |
Add to del.icio.us | 
digg this
-
I can only imagine him playing even a few years with Bird, McHale, and Parish. It wouldn't have been fair to the rest of the teams; like the '27 Yankees...or Red Auerbach's Celtics...or John Wooden's UCLA teams.
When I watch the highlight tapes, I want to say, "Lenny come back down; the basket's down there." Then I think, "Lenny come back down; we're still down here ....."
6/19/06 10:25 PM
rhfiddleman