Bias’ Mom Still in Fight Against Drugs

Len Bias was on the verge of realizing his dreams in June 1986.

He was a two-time Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year at Maryland, having scored more than 2,000 points in college. He had been selected No. 2 overall by the Boston Celtics in the NBA draft. Further fame and a contract worth millions of dollars from a storied franchise awaited him.

But Bias’ legacy was stopped short. His death from cocaine intoxication two days after the draft buckled the knees of his family and the sports public. It began a mother’s quest to transform tragedy into change.

“I believe that Len died so that others could live,” Lonise Bias said Thursday.

Len Bias died on June 19, 1986. With the 20th anniversary of her son’s death approaching, Lonise Bias continues her quest to prevent others from meeting the same fate through her lectures and workshops on drug abuse.

Lonise said she doesn’t look back much on all her son lost and doesn’t waste time trying to assign blame. That her son had so much ahead of him, however, is part of what makes for such a sobering tale and indelible message.

“Had Len lived, he would have entertained you,” Lonise said. “But in death, he’s brought life.... If I stayed back in 1986 in placing blame and pointing fingers, I would not be where I am today. I would be in a local mental hospital somewhere on prescription drugs or standing up at Len’s grave, crying, ‘Woe is me.’ ”

Bias has moved on. But has a nation learned?

Scott M. Burns, deputy director for state and local affairs for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said drug use among eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders is down 19% from 2001. Still, drug abuse is more prevalent now than it was in the early 1990s, Burns said. Every day, Burns said, another 4,000 12- to 17-year-olds use an illegal drug for the first time.

As high-profile and unexpected as the Bias story was, drug-related tragedy and controversy are still a part of sport, including what some have called an epidemic of illegal steroid use at all levels.

“You’d like to think that people saw what happened to Lenny Bias and that it raised everybody’s awareness around how they talk with their athletes and decision-making, but I think we’ve seen enough over the last 20 years to say that message hasn’t necessarily resonated,” said Peter Roby, director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University.

“I do think that it is helpful to try to rekindle some of that and revisit it, if for no other reason than to highlight the potential that was lost.

“He represented all the things people were proud of. For him to meet his demise that way, people were disappointed, people were deeply hurt. People thought, being as celebrated and talented as he was, he was making better decisions. It really shook people to the core.”

Roby, basketball coach at Harvard from 1985 to 1991, was in the Boston area when Bias died. He saw and felt firsthand the shock of Celtics fans, who had looked to Bias as the star who would follow Larry Bird.

Bird himself, Burns said in Thursday’s conference call, called Bias’ death “the cruelest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Bias, 22 when he died, scored 2,149 points in four seasons at Maryland. It is believed by some that Bias had never tried cocaine before the night he died, and Lonise said she had no indication her son was using.

“If he did have a problem, the only thing I would have done is work through it with him,” Lonise said.

Lonise Bias’ main initiative is to promote parental involvement in children’s decision-making and end parents’ denial that their children are susceptible to certain pressures. She lost another son, Jay, then 20, in a shooting in 1990.

Despite her pain, Lonise Bias calls Len a catalyst for elevating drug prevention.

“I’ve mentioned to so many people that it seemed like a bad dream and I wished it would end, a nightmare,” she said. “However, from that experience a mission was birthed out of his tragedy and a platform opened for me to help families.”

Jay Coakley, a sociology professor at the University of Colorado, said Bias’ death shocked but didn’t necessarily awaken the nation. High-profile and stirring cases such as Bias’, however, are worth talking about even 20 years later, he said.

“It occasioned conversation on the spot and in a lot of families and maybe in the locker rooms with coaches and their teams, but I’m not sure it individually had a significant impact on sport,” Coakley said.

“It was a part of series of events that made people much more aware of the presence of various kinds of drugs in sports culture. It’s a reminder that, even when we’re on top of the world, there are boundaries.”