Loss of Len Bias Troubles Celtics : Boston Wanted Young Players to Mold Into Champions

For the Boston Celtics, their attempt to repeat as NBA champions will be accompanied by two presences: one whose achievements are unsurpassed, the other whose promise is now in the past.

This was to have been Len Bias’s rookie year. He was going to join the Celtics as they sought to become the first repeat titlists since Bill Russell’s Boston teams of 1968-69.

Larry Bird was going to attend rookie camp to work with the star from Maryland. The NBA’s three-time Most Valuable Player announced that Bias would prolong his own career. The rookie’s bright future was to join with the Celtics’ glorious past.

Instead, Bias is mourned as a symbol of the dangers of drug abuse and missed by the oldest team in the NBA, who needed his skill and his youth.

“We’re just trying to forget about him and go on,” said Bird, whose appetite for victory barely permits him to savor success. Just minutes after Boston defeated the Houston Rockets in last June’s NBA final, Bird was talking about repeating as champions.

Last year, the Celtics were the league’s oldest team. By this spring’s playoffs, their starting five will average more than 30 years.

“The thing we really needed out of that (college) draft, more than anything, was youth,” said Coach K. C. Jones. “It wasn’t a matter of filling a position, like getting a guard or a forward, because we had no pressing needs.”

Bird, who turns 30 in December, is near the middle of the Celtics’ age spread. Bill Walton and Scott Wedman will both be 34 by next spring, Robert Parish will be 33, Dennis Johnson 32 and Jerry Sichting 30. Kevin McHale at 29 and Danny Ainge at 28 are the youngest of the starters.

The team’s youth is at the end of the bench, with Rick Carlisle, Fred Roberts, Greg Kite and Sam Vincent, all between 26 and 24 years by April.

But the simple fact of age means nothing. Russell was 35 when he played on his final championship team in 1969. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was 38 when the Lakers won the 1985 NBA title and still is playing in 1986 when Los Angeles became the 17th consecutive team to fail to win back-to-back titles.

Russell won a record 11 titles as a player, including the remarkable eight straight from 1959 to 1966.

Since Russell took off his Celtic jersey No. 6 for the last time, the myth has grown that he placed a curse on the NBA title--that no team would repeat after him. And the hex hasn’t failed: four champions lost in the NBA finals, eight in their division finals, two in the division semifinals, two in the first round of the playoffs and one team failed to make the playoffs--the 1970 Russell-less Celtics.

“You must have a great regular season to have a chance of winning,” said Jones, who played guard on eight Boston champions. “You can’t just walk through 82 games and then try to turn it on for the playoffs, because then you’ll lose for sure.”

Bird and Johnson have each been on two teams that failed to repeat, and each says the current Celtics can only be felled by one thing--injury.

“If we play the way we’re capable of playing, there’s no question we can win back to back,” said Johnson, who also won with Seattle in 1979 and Boston in 1984. “But the one thing you can’t control are injuries.”

“If we can avoid the injuries, we’ll win it again,” said Bird, a winner with Boston in 1981 and 1984. “We want it and this team can do it.”

And Red Auerbach, who has coached or built all 16 Celtics championship teams, thinks this year’s team will not stumble, if . . .

“When you’re the champions, they all have to come and get it from you. With a minimum of injury, we should repeat.”