The Tragic Story of Len Bias: Two Days After the Draft

Thanks for watching all the way through. Subscribe below    / @vanishedgreats   Len Bias was the second pick of the 1986 NBA Draft, chosen by the champion Boston Celtics on 17 June 1986. Two days later he was dead of cocaine intoxication in his dormitory at the University of Maryland, without playing a single game in the NBA. The question the video follows is how the country came to remember his death, and where the evidence actually pointed. He was born on 18 November 1963 and grew up in Landover, Maryland, played his high school basketball at Northwestern High School in Hyattsville, and stayed close to home at Maryland under Lefty Driesell. He was named ACC Player of the Year in 1985 and 1986, the only Terrapin to win it twice, was a consensus first-team All-American as a senior, and finished with 2,149 points. On 20 February 1986 he scored 35 as Maryland beat top-ranked North Carolina 77–72 in overtime, the first visiting win in the Dean Smith Center. The Celtics held the pick that took him because of a trade made on 16 October 1984, when they sent Gerald Henderson to Seattle for its 1986 first-round pick. On 18 June 1986 he flew to Boston, met the press as a Celtic and visited Reebok with his father, James, and his agent, Lee Fentress. Back at Washington Hall that night, he used cocaine with teammates Terry Long and David Gregg and a friend, Brian Tribble. He collapsed around 6:30 the next morning, Tribble called 911 at 6:32, and he was pronounced dead just before nine at Leland Memorial Hospital in Riverdale. On 24 June the chief medical examiner, Dr. John Smialek, ruled the cause cocaine intoxication. On 27 October 1986 President Ronald Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which set the same five-year mandatory minimum for 5 grams of crack as for 500 grams of powder cocaine. A 2010 House Judiciary Committee report wrote that his death had been believed to be related to crack, and was later shown to have been from powder cocaine. Tribble was acquitted of all four cocaine charges on 3 June 1987. The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 cut the gap from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1. His number 34 hangs above the court at Maryland, and in 2021 he was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame. Where the sources differ: his time of death is given as 8:50 and as 8:55 a.m. Smialek said it appeared Bias had snorted the cocaine but could not be certain, and in July 1986 an assistant medical examiner, Dr. Dennis Smyth, said Bias had smoked free-base cocaine, so the video says the evidence points to powder rather than that it proves it. The figure of 74 network news segments comes from Reinarman and Levine, who date it to July 1986 and describe the segments as about drugs, half of them about crack; Dan Baum gives the same number for the month after his death. The jury's deliberations are reported as about five hours and as a little over six. The grand jury's final report is dated 26 February 1987 in one account and 2 February in another. Accounts of when he returned to the dormitory that night differ. Larry Bird's reaction is quoted slightly differently by Sports Illustrated and the Associated Press. Terry Long's trial testimony could not be read in the original Washington Post report, so it comes from later accounts based on it. Built from contemporary newspaper and wire reporting, Sports Illustrated's 1986 coverage, Congressional records, sentencing research, and later reporting on his final night and the 1987 trial. Sources Sports Illustrated, "The Cruelest Thing Ever," 30 June 1986 Associated Press, on the medical examiner's findings, 25 June 1986 (as published by The Battalion) Washington Post, on the grand jury indictments, 26 July 1986 United Press International, on the assistant medical examiner's free-base claim, 10 July 1986 United Press International, on the acquittal of Brian Tribble, 3 June 1987 Washington Post, on the acquittal of Brian Tribble, 4 June 1987 Baltimore Sun, "Triumph to turmoil," timeline of the Bias case, 18 June 2006 Washington Post, on the death of Jay Bias, 5 December 1990 House Judiciary Committee, Report 111-670 on the Fair Sentencing Act, 2010 Public Law 111-220, Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 Reinarman and Levine, "The Crack Attack: Politics and Media in the Crack Scare," 1997 NPR, interview with Eric Sterling, 20 June 2011 The Ringer, "What If? The Len Bias Story," episode 4, 23 June 2021 Dave Ungrady, "40 for 34" series on Bias's final days, 2026 Appeal-Democrat, on the 1986 Maryland win at North Carolina, February 2021 Sports-Reference and Basketball-Reference, Len Bias statistics, the 1986 NBA Finals and the 1984 Henderson trade University of Maryland, on his induction into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame