Tremendous Len Bias story

[hondo]

If this is a DP, sorry ... but it's good enough to be a DP, so no one will miss it.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=bias&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab3pos1

 

[maberger]

more boston-centric piffle from the internet's number one boston fanboy website; at least they know their audience.

would bias have gotten 1/100th the attention if golden state drafted him?

 

[zebracoy]

more boston-centric piffle from the internet's number one boston fanboy website; at least they know their audience.

would bias have gotten 1/100th the attention if golden state drafted him?

Entirely, completely disagree. In the wake of the Celtics' championship, this is a completely reasonable - and interestingly-written - topic to bring back up.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

more boston-centric piffle from the internet's number one boston fanboy website; at least they know their audience.

would bias have gotten 1/100th the attention if golden state drafted him?

Entirely, completely disagree. In the wake of the Celtics' championship, this is a completely reasonable - and interestingly-written - topic to bring back up.

Plus it's not like the No. 2 draft pick dying is an everyday occurence, either. And the aftermath, with the tougher drug laws, is still being felt today. It's a worthy topic.

 

[VJ]

The Boston element of the story is such a small part of the story. Bias' death would have had about 2% less impact if he had been drafted by Golden State.

 

[beardpuller]

I hate to agree with Hondo, but this is very good. And it isn't written in a Boston-centric way or for a Bostonian audience.
The point is made in the story, in fact, that Bias being from the D.C. area and getting drafted by Boston had a lot to do with the impact, especially on Congress, via Tip O'Neill, and the resulting drug legislation.
Try reading the story before ripping it.

 

[Bubbler]

My comment is a general one, not a comment on the story, but we don't know how Bias would have fared in the NBA.

I've always found the notion that his death stole championships from the Celtics to be masturbatory wishful thinking and an easy crutch for the mismangement of that franchise from '86 on.

 

[Blitz]

more boston-centric piffle from the internet's number one boston fanboy website; at least they know their audience.

would bias have gotten 1/100th the attention if golden state drafted him?

Yeah, I mean, damn, can we credit good writing here once in a while.
Timely topic, good read.
Not finished with it yet, but solid work.
Many of you might not have been around when Bias played, then passed. Just as it's hard for me to evaluate, say, Elgin Baylor.
Bias was top-shelf and would have been, in my mind, an NBA stud.

 

[Small Town Guy]

Really enjoyed the story and can't wait to read Weinreb's book on sports in the 1980s.

As for Bias the player, I think he would have been really good (I remember watching his famous game against North Carolina in UNC), but I do wonder if his career would have been derailed by his drug use (uh, more than it was...). He could have easily gone the Chris Washburn, Roy Tarpley route; played a couple of seasons and then been undone by rehab, failed drug tests, etc. And I don't know if that crew of Celtics would have won anymore titles with Bias. Injuries and age started ravaging the starters the next season.

 

[Moderator1]

d_b Hondo. d_b. For deeper background, our charming member who posts things late.
But, yeah, good story. Thanks for posting (and it isn't a d_b or a DP)

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Really enjoyed the story and can't wait to read Weinreb's book on sports in the 1980s.

As for Bias the player, I think he would have been really good (I remember watching his famous game against North Carolina in UNC), but I do wonder if his career would have been derailed by his drug use (uh, more than it was...). He could have easily gone the Chris Washburn, Roy Tarpley route; played a couple of seasons and then been undone by rehab, failed drug tests, etc. And I don't know if that crew of Celtics would have won anymore titles with Bias. Injuries and age started ravaging the starters the next season.

The general consensus (or at least according to Bill Simmons ;D ) is that Bias would have enabled Bird, McHale and Parish to have more rest, and be less susceptible to injuries. And if one of them would have missed an extended period of time, Bias would be just as capable as the missing player.

Who knows for sure how his career would have played out. Maybe Jones and Auerbach would have kept him on the straight and narrow.

 

[hondo]

d_b Hondo. d_b. For deeper background, our charming member who posts things late.
But, yeah, good story. Thanks for posting (and it isn't a d_b or a DP)

Wouldn't double post be shortened to DP?

Sorry if I'm not up on what the cool kids on the board are calling things.

 

[Moderator1]

Sorry you're a snarky ass, too. But, no, a d_b is named for deeper background, as I explained. It's not a double post, it is a repeated topic.

 

[nmmetsfan]

I love posting board pissing matches. It's part of what draws me to this site.

 

[Baltimoreguy]

Good story. At the risk of being branded a parochial Baltimoron, I do have to admit that the Boston-ification of Bias's death does irk me. Bias was a legend in Maryland and his death was devastating to this region's people (not to mention its Division I basketball program) in a way that is hard to explain 20 years later.

I heard the news on my way back home to Md. after going to Connecticut for my college pre-freshman orientation. I was asleep in the passenger seat when suddenly my mother, who hadn't then and still hasn't yet watched a college basketball game in her life, yelled to me that the radio sports guy had just said Len Bias was dead. He was that big of a deal even to someone as uninterested in sports as she. The community was profoundly shaken in a way that exposes as painfully shallow the "The Celtics would have been even more awesome if Bias hadn't died!" line of mourning.

As someone who grew up living and breathing ACC basketball, I think James Worthy is the baseline comparison of what Bias would have been in the NBA, with considerable room for being much, much better.

Here's a link to the single play that defined Len Bias as a player, the greatest highlight of his career. I bet every Maryland/DC person on the board can identify that moment without clicking the link.

 

[maberger]

I hate to agree with Hondo, but this is very good. And it isn't written in a Boston-centric way or for a Bostonian audience.
The point is made in the story, in fact, that Bias being from the D.C. area and getting drafted by Boston had a lot to do with the impact, especially on Congress, via Tip O'Neill, and the resulting drug legislation.
Try reading the story before ripping it.

i did read it.
hope you don't approach your assignments with such assumptions.

 

[maberger]

more boston-centric piffle from the internet's number one boston fanboy website; at least they know their audience.

would bias have gotten 1/100th the attention if golden state drafted him?

Yeah, I mean, damn, can we credit good writing here once in a while.
Timely topic, good read.
Not finished with it yet, but solid work.
Many of you might not have been around when Bias played, then passed. Just as it's hard for me to evaluate, say, Elgin Baylor.
Bias was top-shelf and would have been, in my mind, an NBA stud.

okay writing...bad journalism. the death of len bias has the same impact as JFK or MLK? that's what the experience of 30-40-year-olds has been dumbed down to? "...we, as a society, stopped and stared collectively into the void and declared that human existence was entirely unjust.'

we did?

"And I do believe that because of this public narrative and the consequences of this narrative, the death of Len Bias can be classified as the most socially influential moment in the history of modern sports."

hyperventilate much? never heard of jackie robinson or muhammad ali, i guess.

an arbitrary anniversary combined with boston's nba victory stands as the reasoning for running this now. I feel for his mom and his remaining family and friends; i've notn suffered a loss like this, so i cant imagine how deep the damage runs.

but if you ask me, the real story is buried near the bttom, when overwhelming evidence to the contrary, lonise bias says this: "It's been said it was his first time," Lonise Bias says.

there's the tragedy worth investigating -- a mother who even 20 years later still doesn't know her son.

 

[playthrough]

more boston-centric piffle from the internet's number one boston fanboy website; at least they know their audience.

would bias have gotten 1/100th the attention if golden state drafted him?

Yeah, I mean, damn, can we credit good writing here once in a while.
Timely topic, good read.
Not finished with it yet, but solid work.
Many of you might not have been around when Bias played, then passed. Just as it's hard for me to evaluate, say, Elgin Baylor.
Bias was top-shelf and would have been, in my mind, an NBA stud.

okay writing...bad journalism. the death of len bias has the same impact as JFK or MLK? that's what the experience of 30-40-year-olds has been dumbed down to? "...we, as a society, stopped and stared collectively into the void and declared that human existence was entirely unjust.'

we did?

That line is immediately prefaced by "If you were alive then, and you cared at all about sports, or about drugs, you most likely remember it well." I think he established his context that this was a JFK-*like* moment for sports. It wasn't another JFK for the entire universe.

 

[Michael Echan]

Tremendous story and I agree with the sentiment that people who think this is purely just a pile-on story for Boston fans obviously didn't read the article. Boston just happens to be the team that drafted him. The story is not about how Maryland influenced/was influenced by Bias or what could have been in Boston had Bias not snorted (or smoked) the coke (or crack) that night. It was about the ripple effects caused by his death at that precise time in America.

This line is probably one of the best -- if not the best -- to describe the heart of this piece:

"In death," Dan Baum wrote in "Smoke and Mirrors," Len Bias "would become the Archduke Ferdinand of the Total War on Drugs."

 

[beardpuller]

I hate to agree with Hondo, but this is very good. And it isn't written in a Boston-centric way or for a Bostonian audience.
The point is made in the story, in fact, that Bias being from the D.C. area and getting drafted by Boston had a lot to do with the impact, especially on Congress, via Tip O'Neill, and the resulting drug legislation.
Try reading the story before ripping it.

i did read it.
hope you don't approach your assignments with such assumptions.

And I hope you don't usually draw totally erroneous conclusions from what you read.