The Legend of Len Bias By Scoop Jackson Page 2 When does a person become a martyr? Is it before he dies, or is it the moment his life leaves him? Who knew that this would be one of Len Bias' last moments?Or, is it somewhere in between? Are there some who are born to be martyrs, predestined, by a plan of God? Chosen ones. Except we just don't know it … until they're gone. It's akin to sainthood, this martyrdom. Membership has no privileges. Instead, it has anointment. In the game of basketball there aren't many of these martyrs. There are Maurice Stokes, Ben Wilson, Hank Gathers. There are others, maybe. Very few. Yet there is one who -- if this can be said without sacrilege -- is above the others. I think Len Bias attained martyr status before he died on June 19, 1986. I think he became one even before he was drafted by the Boston Celtics with the second pick in the '86 NBA draft, something that in my mind almost guaranteed the Celts an 80-2 record during the '86-87 season -- and maybe one loss in the playoffs -- which would have made them the greatest team the world of sports -- not just basketball -- had ever seen. Len's moment came while in a University of Maryland uniform, his senior season, inside the Dean Dome at the University of North Carolina. When he transformed from ballplayer into something greater than … Jordan. Bomani Jones says Len Bias just might be the most influential athlete of the 20th century -- and he never even played in the NBA. Bias had already torched the entire Tar Heel squad for about 30, but he still needed to make a statement. The game was close. UNC still had a chance. After making the net swallow another one of his jump shots, instead of running downcourt to play D, LB U-turned and stole the inbound pass. You could hear Dean Smith's heart break. Len went up in the lane to seal Carolina's fate, but it was what he did after the dunk that transformed everything. It was called "the Jesus dunk." And beyond being a religious experience, it was a biblical re-enactment with the beauty that Mel Gibson missed. The dunk was a reverse, you see. And as Bias released his hands from the rim, he extended his arms … out … while still in the air … as if he were on a cross … as if he were Christ. While 10 feet above the ground he seemed to float back down to the court, arms still out, palms still open. It was like he descended down to earth from heaven, from above the rim. The second it took for his feet to touch the court seemed more than one second in time. It seemed slower than slow motion, it seemed as if he was letting the world know his destiny, who he was destined to be. Bias with his fellow top picks in 1986, Kenny "Sky" Walker, Chuck Person, Brad Daugherty and Chris Washburn.After that game Bias' coach, Lefty Driesell, said, "If Lenny Bias isn't the player of the world, I don't know who is." High praise, all praises due. Because this was the moment when, regardless of what would happen the rest of Len Bias' career -- and life -- he reached the plateau of being remembered for life, remembered as one of the greatest players ever to bless basketball. Then, like a rose that grew from concrete, two days after he was picked by the Celtics, his life was over. I remember, days later, the Sports Illustrated cover. Framed in blue, him standing at the free-throw line. His look was that of a ghetto Mona Lisa. There was a slight smile, slight game face, slight we'll never know. And that's where we sit today, in a "we'll never know" existence. A martyr's paradise. What we do know, though, is that for a short period of time Len Bias showed us not just how well he could play the game, but how the game was going to be played if he were allowed to live. To be real, he was simply LeBron James before LeBron James was born. The same way we are comparing Dwyane Wade to Jordan now, putting him at times on that level, if LB had lived, LBJ would be the chosen one who followed his legacy. Only we'd be wondering if LeBron were as good. And yet -- as with all who receive this, inherit it through death -- all martyrs aren't saints. Just as everyone from MLK to Tupac Shakur has been immortalized post-life, it is often their lives outside of their work that we must try to forget. So when you discover, find out, realize that the death of one said martyr was of his own demise, you try to push it back into the context of what he meant to you, to the rest of the world. You go into denial. Even after 20 years. But there was no denying the impact Len Bias had on basketball, and the promise he took with him when he held up the peace sign for the last time. His legend had surpassed urban -- it had crossed over. Which is a beautiful thing for a brotha to experience, even if he isn't here to experience it. It validates all that he did while he was here, validates all the work he put in, all the passion he had, and -- regardless of how his life ended -- that he didn't take God's gift of basketball to him for granted. Because if Len Bias did, God would not have allowed him to impersonate his Son in a basketball game. Which may be the reason He has not allowed anyone to do it since. Scoop Jackson is a national columnist for Page 2 and a contributor to ESPN The Magazine. He has a weekly segment on "Cold Pizza" and is a regular forum guest on "Rome Is Burning." He resides in Chicago http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=jackson/060619_bias
scoop is a good writer, but this is just a crazy, far-reaching, and flat out sacrligious piece. i love sports but i hate when we start comparing ball players to God and Jesus Christ. Len Bias was a basketball player and a damn good one, but this is just taking so far and beyond.
Man, it seems like they do a Len Bias piece every year. Was he really THAT good? And how in the hell did the champion Celtics get the 2nd pick in the draft? How unfair is that.....
is it possible to write about something other than Boston or New York if you work for ESPN? just call it NESN/MSG and get it over with already.
Have you ever seen any footage of him? I'm not saying yes or no to your question, I just figure if you haven't seen a lot of him you might be interested in this video I have on my computer. I could upload it if you'd like.
http://www.n-c-systems.com/hoops/DraftTrades/1986.html Celtics — Traded Gerald Henderson to Sonics for 1986 first round pick (#2-Len Bias) on 10/16/84
Well, I was going to upload the video I have but then I saw that it was already on YouTube anyway. Here's a couple of the videos on there... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvyHXqJIxTw&search=Len Bias http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qHB7TAoUUc&search=Len Bias
len bias was the face of the war on drugs, he gave nacy reagan a matyr, not what scoop is talking about.
This is one of those things that changed the course of league history, and being originally from Boston, it probably still hurts for a lot of people. We should've been looking at 6-time world champs in the late 80's/90's. Having Bias on a team with Bird, McHale, Parsh, Ainge, DJ, Walton would've probably extended many of their careers and kept them contenders further into the 90's. Bird was laid out by the scorers table constantly before he'd have to go in. The guy's back wouldn't let him carry the team anymore. Instead, we got the Dino Raja era... Think about how awesome it would've been to play the Celts in 94-95. It would've been better than if we played the Bulls, forget about the Knicks or Magic. It's be like if we got the #1 pick in '97 with aging Hakeem, Clyde, and Barkley. Add Duncan to that team and you'd probably see some of those guys play a few years longer and a few rings. But instead, Duncan decides to try coke 2 days after the draft and it kills him. Not only tragic but then you don't any compensation. Your team is now heading for rebuilding mode. And I'm not bothered by the "savior" thing. It's a metaphor that's used loosely to hype people up in sports but it's not like he intended to say "hey len bias was the son of god and performed miracles". I don't see anyone upset about Lebron's "witness" ads. Those come off sort of biblical feeling to me. What I wouldn't give for years of Bulls/Celts playoff games. They would've been more interesting than anything else the East had to offer at that time. The Bad Boys Pistons are just boring to me except to see how different Rodman was.
Sorry for the horrible formatting. I was doing more reading on the Celtics from the mid/late 80's and take a look at the '86 championship team. Most of all look at the last column, the PPG section. Of course I always compare everything to the Rockets so what stuck out at me here was the scoring distribution. They had Bird and McHale scoring 25 and 21 which is a lot like what T-Mac and Yao will produce. After that it gets much different. Parish and Dennis Johnson both got about 16/gm. The scoring was higher then (86 Celts avgd 111 ppg). But still, its so blatently obvious that where we come short is our third and fourth scorers. I'm racking my brain to think of how we can get someone capable of that, and I'm not feeling great about the MLE or the #8. The way the Celts got Parish/McHale or the Mavs get Stackhouse is shrewd deal-making. I think our management is capable but do we have the resources to rip someone off like that? Name G MP FG FGA 3P 3PA FT FTA ORB DRB TRB AST STL BLK TO PF PTS +--------------------+---+----+----+----+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+---+---+---+---+----+ Larry Bird 82 38.0 9.7 19.6 1.0 2.4 5.4 6.0 2.3 7.5 9.8 6.8 2.0 0.6 3.2 2.2 25.8 Kevin McHale 68 35.3 8.3 14.4 0.0 0.0 4.8 6.2 2.5 5.6 8.1 2.7 0.4 2.0 2.2 2.8 21.3 Robert Parish 81 31.7 6.5 11.9 0.0 0.0 3.0 4.1 3.0 6.5 9.5 1.8 0.8 1.4 2.3 2.7 16.1 Dennis Johnson 78 35.0 6.2 13.6 0.1 0.5 3.1 3.8 0.9 2.6 3.4 5.8 1.4 0.4 2.2 2.6 15.6 Danny Ainge 80 30.1 4.4 8.8 0.3 0.9 1.5 1.7 0.6 2.4 2.9 5.1 1.2 0.1 1.6 2.6 10.7 Scott Wedman 79 17.7 3.6 7.7 0.2 0.6 0.6 0.9 0.8 1.6 2.4 1.1 0.5 0.3 0.7 1.6 8.0 Bill Walton 80 19.3 2.9 5.1 0.0 0.0 1.8 2.5 1.7 5.1 6.8 2.1 0.5 1.3 1.9 2.6 7.6 Jerry Sichting 82 19.5 2.9 5.0 0.1 0.2 0.7 0.8 0.3 0.9 1.3 2.3 0.6 0.0 0.9 1.4 6.5 David Thirdkill 49 7.9 1.1 2.2 0.0 0.0 1.1 1.8 0.6 0.9 1.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0.4 1.1 3.3 Sam Vincent 57 7.6 1.0 2.8 0.0 0.1 1.1 1.2 0.2 0.6 0.8 1.2 0.3 0.1 0.9 1.0 3.2 Sly Williams 6 9.0 0.8 3.5 0.0 0.7 1.2 2.0 1.2 1.3 2.5 0.3 0.2 0.2 1.2 2.5 2.8 Rick Carlisle 77 9.9 1.2 2.5 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.3 0.7 1.0 1.4 0.2 0.1 0.6 1.2 2.6 Greg Kite 64 7.3 0.5 1.4 0.0 0.0 0.2 0.6 0.5 1.5 2.0 0.3 0.0 0.4 0.5 1.3 1.3 +--------------------+---+----+----+----+---+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+---+---+---+---+----+
len bias aside (nothing against him and don't have a big opinion on him either way) i cant even read scoop jackson's articles. he's not a good writer but he thinks he is, and this article is garbage. does anybody else feel this way? it seems that everytime i read an article and think to myself, "this sucks" i glance at the top and see it's scoop jackson. i dont know how that guy got his job.
Funny you should mention Duncan; weren't the Celtics the big lottery loser in the Tim Duncan sweepstakes?
