2003 Top 50 List: Yes
Dan Collins List: Yes
What can I say about Len Bias that hasn’t already been said? The tragic circumstances surrounding his untimely death have conferred upon him a kind of mythical status, a basketball version of James Dean. Is it possible to chip away at the layers of myth and discover the player underneath?
He was a part of one of the greatest classes in ACC history, the Class of 1986. In addition to Bias, there were four other players who made the Top 100: Johnny Dawkins, Mark Price, Brad Daugherty, and Mark Alarie. Those five players comprised first team All-ACC in 1986, and that is the only time in ACC history that all five spots were occupied by seniors. As you might imagine, it was an exceptional year for the conference overall; 75% (6 out of 8) of the teams made the NCAA Tournament (and the 7th-place team, Clemson, was pretty darn good). Four teams made the Sweet 16, and Duke went to the national final before losing to Louisville.
Was Bias the best of the group? The ACC writers certainly thought so. In 1985, he was unanimous first team All-ACC and garnered 54 of the 92 ACC Player of the Year votes (NC State’s Lorenzo Charles was second with 28). In 1986, he was again unanimous first team All-ACC and garnered 81 of the 133 ACC Player of the Year votes (Dawkins was second with 40).
Bias was a first-team All-American as a senior but ran behind Dawkins, St. John’s Walter Berry, and Kentucky’s Kenny Walker in national Player of the Year voting. Perhaps Bias was the best of the bunch, or maybe it’s too easy to romanticize about him because of what happened. In any case, it didn’t help that he played on a team that went 6-8 in the ACC, while Duke, St. John’s, and Kentucky were among the best teams in the country. Despite the record, the ACC voters understood the greatness they were watching. Bias had 41 in a midseason loss to second-ranked Duke. Then he topped that performance a few weeks later with 35 in a win over #1 North Carolina – the Tar Heels’ first ever loss at the Dean Dome.
His career was characterized by constant growth. He had a rare combination of athleticism, grace, intelligence, and a tremendous work ethic. He was considered raw as a freshman, but just kept polishing his game and adding elements to it year by year, until by his senior year, he was incredibly skilled for a big man. As a senior, he led the ACC in free-throw percentage at 86%, one of the few true big men (Sam Perkins, Christian Laettner, and Wake Forest’s Darius Songaila are the others) to lead the league in that category. He was, in many ways, like Michael Jordan – a kind of basketball savant who was getting better at an exponential rate and leaving his peers behind. I am firmly convinced he would have been an NBA Hall-of-Famer and an all-time great had June 18, 1986 never happened.
Bias, by all accounts, was a person of strong character and integrity. How do we reconcile this with his drug use? I read the 1992 book Lenny, Lefty, and the Chancellor by Fraser Smith to get some insight on that question. Ultimately, I think it comes down to three things. 1) It’s more common than we realize for public figures under pressure to perform to have some sort of private escape, often something disreputable, they turn to as a coping mechanism. We shouldn’t be surprised at this. 2) Bias was not an addict. He lived in a time and place when it was fairly common to use cocaine occasionally to celebrate or to take the edge off. 3) His overdose was a freak accident. Millions of young people have done things riskier than Len Bias and gotten away with them. While the overall picture of Bias that emerges from the book is psychologically complex, it does support the conclusion that he was, in fact, a person of strong character and integrity who likely would have matured, left drugs behind altogether, and fulfilled the greatness that was expected of him. But he never got the chance.