Ten Years Later, Terrapins, Celtics Still Feel Impact

By the time he ended his fourth season with the University of Maryland basketball team, Len Bias was the most prolific scorer in school history and widely recognized as the finest player ever to wear a Terrapin uniform.

His dreams of fame and riches were about to come true: the Boston Celtics made the 22-year-old forward the No. 2 pick in the NBA draft. He would soon be a millionaire and playing on a front line that included Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish.

Two days later, on June 19, 1986, Bias was dead of a cocaine overdose after a night of partying in a Maryland dormitory room.

“It’s the cruelest thing I’ve ever heard,” Bird said upon hearing the news.

Ten years later, and after almost a decade of athletic chaos at Maryland, the school president calls the Bias tragedy “a reminder to us of what can happen if you are not on guard.”

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Bias’ death not only changed many people’s perception of cocaine as a harmless recreational drug, it also had repercussions for the two basketball programs he was associated with.

His death dealt a blow to the Celtics’ quest to remain among the NBA’s elite. More serious was its effect on Maryland’s athletic program.

“The tragedy of that moment is something that none of us will ever forget or ever overcome,” university president William Kirwan said. “But the lessons that we learned as an institution, and the changes that we made, are very positive.”

After Bias died, a university task force investigated the basketball program and found academic deficiencies and drug use among athletes. It was also determined that Bias skipped virtually all of his classes upon the conclusion of the 1985-86 basketball season.

The panel proposed that players meet tougher admission and academic standards and do without some of the special treatment they had received in the past. The report did not fault anyone specifically, but said some coaches placed the academic and personal development of their students below their athletic performances.

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Athletic director Dick Dull resigned under pressure. Coach Lefty Driesell, regarded as a father figure to his players and a fixture on the ACC basketball scene, came under harsh criticism as his program was probed and eventually resigned.

Driesell was replaced by Bob Wade, a high school coach who found he was in way over his head at the college level.

Things only got worse under Wade. Maryland went 36-50--including an embarrassing 7-35 in the Atlantic Coast Conference--before the coach left the school in the wake of NCAA sanctions against the basketball program.

Wade, forced to resign after three seasons, was charged with providing players and recruits with items he received through a Nike endorsement deal, not cooperating with the NCAA’s investigation and encouraging his staff members and some players to do the same.

The only charge Wade admitted to was having knowledge of rides given to player Rudy Archer by former staff members Woody Williams and Ed Lansford to Prince George’s Community College during 1988.

“It’s taken us years to get this program back to normal,” said current basketball coach Gary Williams. “So many things happened in those three years after Len Bias died.”

Williams came to Maryland in 1989 and spent several years trying to revive a once-proud basketball team that was left reeling by Bias’ death and NCAA sanctions. He found success in 1994-95, when the Terrapins, led by All-American center Joe Smith, went 26-8 and advanced to the NCAA tournament’s round of 16.

Smith was the top pick of the ’95 NBA draft, the highest Maryland player taken since Bias.

Despite the wrenching emotions that followed Bias’ death, Maryland officials believe the school has become a better place for its athletes a decade later.

“It was a tragedy, but I also think it was a catalyst to improve the basketball program,” athletic director Debbie Yow said.

Within two years of Bias’ death, the school:

--Established an academic support unit for all athletes.

--Implemented a policy barring regular-season games during final examination periods.

--Instituted a random drug-testing policy for student athletes.

--Established academic performance requirements for student athletes that are more stringent than NCAA requirements for satisfactory progress.

--Raised admission standards for athletes, which hampered the success of the basketball and football programs but increased the graduation rate of the athletes.

Kirwan said the graduation rate of athletes is now 2% higher that the rest of the student population and that the 68% graduation rate is a 13% increase from 1990.

Dr. Betty Smith, the school’s academic representative to the NCAA, is one of few administrators at Maryland who was on the staff 10 years ago. Smith said the death of Bias, while certainly a tragedy, pushed Maryland into making some much-needed changes.

“What happened to Len Bias could have happened to another student at any other institution in the country,” she said. “It happened here, though, so it forced us to do some things before other schools. Maybe that is the most important thing to come out of this--it forced us to move forward, much more rapidly than we would have without that incident.”