Well, Lambias is important today, not just for his basketball. He's important because he literally took the bullet, no pun intended. I've never ever had anything to do with cocaine ever, I've never been curious about it. But I'm definitely not curious about it because of what happened to my friendly buyers. This is the idea of a of a star in full bloom that ultimately had that had that flamed doubt by a mistake. People should recognize this as, you know, a lesson, a tragedy along the lines of a Greek tragedy. If you will um you know this is uh in many ways, this is icorous flying to to the sun and only then have those wings melted and plummet to the earth. So in the world, his death has made him like a modest you. You could have everything in the world going for you for you to think you want to do something that's as silly as not on one line of cocaine. You should know better that he's important because he can show you that you can be on top of the world one second and then not a part of the world. Next, the Eight Side Network and Go Grady Media presents lend Bys a mixed legacy. I'm surprised to lend by story is not being told on a yearly basis when new athletes come into college or into high school to learn by story is one of the better stories you can use to get an individual or team to do the right thing. The French to the boy that can show that the game he made him a name game. Many people from my generation I'm in my early sixties vividly remember the day Land Bias died and how they reacted to the shocking news. Sure it helped if you were a Maryland fan, which I am, and it helped more if you were a Maryland athlete i was, but you didn't have to have such a direct connection to the University of Maryland to have your emotions tazard after finding out Bias died, some knew him from their home roots or from playing basketball together. Derek Whittenberg grew up not far from Land and played basketball within against him. He was a national champion with NC State and later a college coach. I'll never forget it. And I heard the news and I couldn't believe it. I put over the side of the road. I cried like a crowd, like a two Ero, And there was a seven year old boy who became a Celtics fan after they picked Lennon in the draft. His name is Matt Roboto. He found refuge in a comfortable place after he found out lenn died. I just sprinted out of the house crying, like when I sprint it outside, went up like, went up to my tree out and we had had a little tree for it. I sat up there for a little bit and then um, you know when all my swing sat swaying, swang, swang. And still three decades later, some still can't forget. J Billis played against Bias for four years while at Duke. I'll never stop thinking about it. There'll never be a time when you know, the draft, the draft passes and I won't think about you know, lenn Bias died right right about now. The death of Bias prompted those reactions because of who he was, the top college basketball player in It was because of how he played basketball with a consistent and controlled intensity. It was because of what he was expected to become, perhaps the greatest player ever, and because of how he died shortly after consuming a large amount of cocaine and suffering a heart attack. Most people know that much about Bias, even those who are from younger generations, but there is so much more to lens life and his legacy. That's why Go Gradymedia and Octagon Entertainment have partnered to produce a podcast series that examines in great detail Len's life and legacy. This is Davon Grady, the president of Go Grady Media and executive producer of this series. I'm the author of the book Born Ready, The Mixed Legacy of Len Bias. The book was published ten years ago this month. I'm here to help introduce to you a groundbreaking piece of broadcast journalism. It's a podcast series called Len Bias A Mixed Legacy. The series is based heavily on the book, and it examines Len's life and legacy from his teen years when he learned how to play basketball through the thirty five years since his death. Joining me as a producer on the podcast is longtime sports journalist Don Marcus. Don joined the Baltimore Sun in and covered the last year of Len's career, and he reported on Maryland athletics for the Sun for much of the next few decades. He's also the author of a book on things Maryland fans should do before they die. Don has also reported on the NBA extensively. He is one of the most respected journalists covering Meryland athletics. Welcome Don, Thanks Dave, I too remember exactly where I was when I heard the news. I just finished covering the US Open golf tournament on Long Island and was starting what I hoped to be a two week vacation with my wife. I had played golf in the morning and returned into the B and B where we were staying. I was stunned and saddened to hear about the most talented college player had ever covered personally on a beat, dying at age two days after being picked number two by the Boston Celtics. My wife asked me what I thought happened, and I said I wouldn't be surprised if they found out it was drugs. Why was I suspicious? Drugs were prevalent in the nineteen eighties, not just among athletes, and Bias was already reported to have been celebrating with friends and teammates in his dorm suite. It was one of the few times in my career as a reporter that I regretted being right, You're listening to Lynn Bias a Mixed Legacy on the eight Side Network. We will start off focusing on one topic, who was Lenn Bias, What made him so great? And what was the tragedy that defines him more than his accomplishments as a basketball player. Throughout this segment, we will feature clips from interviews done for the podcast series We Held. They will add depth to our discussion. To help deepen that discussion further, we are joined by Clark Kellog, a former college and NBA player and now a college basketball analyst for CBS Sports. Clark's college career ended as Lent Biases began. He was an All Big Ten player at Ohio State. After his junior year, Clark was the number eight overall pick in the NBA Draft by the Indiana Pacers. Clark and others wonder what Lens NBA career might have been like had he stayed healthy, and Clark has often thought about what biases career arc might have looked like had he not died at the age of twenty two. Welcome Clark to start off. Who was Led Bias from your perspective, well, from my perspective, being a guy who was at that time with the Indiana Pacers, still attached to the college game, and that I played at Ohio State, so I kept up with a big ten in college basketball in general. Um, he was a dynamic, explosive high level player. I mean, two time Player of the Year in the a c C. Um had a charisma about his game that was special in addition to the athleticism, the finishing ability, the way he played, the exuberance he played with, the explosiveness. UM. So I only got to witness that from Afar, But being a guy who kind of was a student of the game from the time I fell in love with it at ten years old, and then having been able to enjoy some success myself at the high school, college and pro level, you get a sense of what guys are like, even if you haven't been on the court with you watch him enough and see what they do. And he had a huge, huge, um ceiling in terms of what he could have become as an NBA player. I mean, you put up the numbers he did his last two seasons at Maryland in the a c C against that type of competition, and you look at his his package, his tool kit, UH quickness, explosiveness, Uh, really nice stroke, mid range game that would have probably stretched out to to deep range. Uh. The ability to finish in the open court. All of those things would would have translated, I think to really outstanding NBA career, perhaps multile time All Star career, had he not come to his um terrible and unfortunate um death. Now let's bring it Don Marcus to give us a general overview of Len Bias the player. Don you covered Maryland basketball for the Baltimore Sun during his senior year, and you would cover the NBA prior to that for Newsday. Tell us about Len Bias the basketball player when you started covering him and compare him to other NBA talent at that time. Dave, the interesting thing about covering Bias for a senior in Maryland was that they had just finished covering another future Hall of Famer, Chris Mullen at St. John's, and I have been around yet another Patrick Ewing at Georgetown. While writing about the Big East, my first Final Four was and I watched Michael Jordan hit the go ahead jumper that helped North Carolina beat Georgetown in New Orleans. I had spent time with Jordan during his last two years in Chapel Hell. I really didn't know how good Bias was until I began to cover Maryland. By the end of that season, he had surpassed all the other great players that had covered Jordan, included people knew Lend a teenager, as well as Brian Waller. Bias and Waller learned to play basketball at the Columbia Park Recreation Center, also known as the Wreck, with the help of coach Johnny Walker. Waller and Bias were later high school teammates for two years. Bias grew up in the Columbia Park community and land Over, Maryland, some ten miles from the University of Maryland campus. The Wreck is located a couple of blocks from the house where Lynn grew up. Waller did not talk to us for this podcast, but he did to me from my book about Land. Here's what he said about Land. Learning the game at the Wreck, Johnny gave us everything that wasn't in the rule book. When you're not used to it, you whine and cry. People were fouling Lend all the time. No matter how much you wind, Johnny was still killing him. On Monday and Wednesday, as we'd play against the older guys in the gym. That's how they played. You either step up or you don't. It's important to note that Bias, as best we know, did not play organized basketball until the ninth grade. He was cut from his junior high team in the seventh and eighth grades. Lend learned the game primarily from two people, Johnny Walker, his mentor and coach at the Wreck, and Bob Wagner, his coach at Northwestern High School. Wagner helped transform Land from a baby to a bruiser Bias during the varsity his sophomore year. Wagner quickly noticed that Bios struggled to deal with adversity and Leonard wasn't a handful to manage. I mean, that's one of the reasons I was straight with him and everybody else. Why in what ways? Oh, he was a cry baby, he was a whiner. He you know, he had to open his mouth. Most of the time. He was right, but he would try to talk back to the officials. He'd slam the ball once in a while. We will provide more details about Len's high school and college careers in the next segment of this podcast series, but we will address it here with a general observation from Molly Glassman, who I worked with at the Baltimore Sun. Molly covered high school basketball in Maryland when Lynn was at Northwestern and later had the Maryland basketball be at the Evening Sun when Bias joined the team. She later became my editor at the Morning Sun when the papers merged. I had known of Lenny, you know, as a as a junior at Northwestern, so you know, his reputation as a as a strong local high school player had been established. So when he signed with when left he signed him with Maryland, UM, you know, it was big news that that he uh was signed. It wasn't as big though as Adrian Branch, who was from Damatha and got far more publicity in high school. So yeah, he was a He was considered a local guy and a public school star, but not quite in the in the top echelon of recruits. I hadn't seen him play in high school, but he had a reputation as a a guy who could play all around the hoop. He was a good shooter, but he was also a strong rebounder in high school and then UM when he came to Maryland as a as a freshman, again he was pretty much overshadowed by Branch as the big name recruit. And it was towards the end of his freshman year that we started to say, you know, you know, this kid is is going to be great. He was, you know, he always had the reputation as being somebody raw, you know who really needed to develop a defensively and offensively Maryland started owing five in the a SEC during bias senior year, in my first year on the beat, he wound up carrying him back to the n c A Tournament. It was helped by that memorable thirty five point performance to beat number one North Carolina on the road. It was the first loss from the tar Heels in the then brand new Deemdom. Thanks Don, Let's now bring it back to Clark. Kellogg, Clark, what did you notice most about Land when he was transforming into a dominant college player? So from his junior year too, I thought his senior year I saw enough to where I thought he just refined what he had. I liked his ability to score mid range and step out and knockdown shots. Finishing transition. He was a better than average rebounder. The boy. When we come back, we will discuss Len Bias the person name never became m Boy. Welcome back to the introduction to the podcast series Lend Bias A Mixed Legacy. This is Davon Grady, producer of the series along with Don Marcus. Before the break, we explained who Len Bias was as a basketball player. Now we will frame Len Bias the person. Bob Wagner, Len's high school coach, recalled an adventurous side of Len's personality. Uh. The thing that Leonard was good at is he smiled. He took time to you know, with the girls and the kids, and it's a charm. But it wasn't a funny thing. Answer who he was and enjoyed people. And I think people will work. And you know, you like Leonard whether you played basketball or not, if you knew it. Um, And I think that hurt people, you know, and he was he was not running around wild. Uh. You know as a kid in high school. You know, I've never and the kid a Trankopierre or anything else. I always said about Larry. Did you put him with good kids? He's the best kid with the good kids. You put in with the guys and he can be the best. Uh. For example, he he didn't play his first game in high school and the Pom Pom sponsor had left the classroom open with a bunch of candy bars in it, which was going to be a fundraiser. So what we had was activity buses. So by the time we finished school or practice and the buses came to take the kids home, the kids would study, or they'd wander the halls or whatever. Well, of course they wandered in there and the guys took some candy bars, so that was his punishment there. One of the guys from the DC area who got to know Lenn pretty well was Derek Whittenberg. Derek was a star at the mat the high school, and later won a national title at NC State. He was a few years older than Lenn, but remembers playing pickup games with him on the outdoor courts at the Wreck. He got to know Lenny pretty out lely. Was very quiet, very quiet guy, very quiet and somewhat shot um. Unless he was around his friends. He was open and friendly, but I wouldn't say he was this party animal, a guy who just like I wanted to be out all the time. I think he was. He had a lot of shodness to him, and he had a wonderful person down the big smile, But I don't think he was just outgoing God Dave. One of the best insights offered of Lynn the person as he went from high school to college comes from Johnny Holiday. Johnny has been the radio played by play voice of Maryland basketball and football since nineteen seventy nine. My recollections of when was what a nice kid he was a so I've spoken down to earth, as down to earth as you could be before he became a superstar, of course. And I remember going to Northwestern High School the day he signed is a letter of antet to come to the University of Maryland, and sitting and talking with him and realizing that, well, this kid's very shy. His kids are very quiet. This kid is not going to be a very good interview. He didn't say anything at all. I remember the first year, the first couple of interviews we did with him, Um, it was like a lot of yes and no answers and even sometimes nodding of his head. And I would stop the recorder of remindling that this is what you're gonna have to talk. You know, they can't see you nodding your head and big smile okay, okay, And like all young players, when you stick a microphone in front of them, they moved back, and I kept moving in, and he'd moved back, and I moved in and he'd moved back, and it got to be a He got to be one of the best interviews. And he was guarded and what he had to say, because you're not gonna throw the your teammates under the bus, and you're not gonna throw the coaches under the bus. But he was He was always fun to talk to, always fun to be around. John Sally met Lynn Bias at the Five Star Basketball camp when they were both in high school. At Georgia Tech, he played four years against Bias and he got to know when very well. He was introverted, um, really quiet, but he would show up on the court. Never brag adosious, if that is even a word. Um he never. He wasn't one of those people. He would give you the business and that be in like even if you were the chair. He would like, calm down, calm down. He didn't like that. He didn't like all that high five in jumping around. Calming down. He would always see Lenny be like yo, chill till As Lynn's career progressed at Maryland, he started to feel some pressure not only from basketball, but also in his personal life. I'd like to play a sound bite of Bob Wagner, his high school coach, talking about a discussion you had with Lenn. Coach Wagner says Len would stop by the high school to talk with him. He mentioned a conversation that focused on a common trapping of being a superstar athlete, said Mr Wagner. He says, um, you know, I'm having fun, but he says, you know, I get tired of this. You know, girls coming by, I'm trying to study, and the girls combined and New Year note was early on. He says, if I say no, then they'll go like you were with her, or what's wrong with you? Or don You've talked about how difficult Lenn was to deal with during his senior year, can you expand on that. I had certainly had my share of covering reluctant superstars or athletes who just didn't like talking to the press. I've been one of the few college basketball writers who was invited to Georgetown to interview Patrick Ewing for the first time. By the time I began covering Bias. He had pretty much become the player who everyone wanted to talk to in College Park. For a late season profile, he blew me off for to sit down interviews at Coldfield House. I finally got him on the flight home after a game against Wake Forest was fogged in the PR guy told me I had a captive audience, and when Bias saw me coming toward him, he smiled. I told them, Lenn, you've been a pleasure to watch and a pain in the asked to cover he laughed and said, I respect that you're being honest. Here again is my former colleague, Molly Glassman. By the time he was a junior and senior, uh, he was less accessible and um harder to read than he was when he was younger. When he was younger, I certainly remember how much he talked about he loved to draw. At one point he wanted to be an interior designer. Um you know, he was talking about that artistic side of him his personality, and um you know, I'm not sure where that went, but I don't recall that really at all his senior year, that that was part of who he was. He was He always seemed to have some some group of people waiting for him at the end of that Coldfield House. You know that where the locker rooms came out he was. He wasn't going back to his dorm to to fill his sketch pad after games. I don't think he was going to make it, as the number two makes about it, Boston something it would have been. So you're listening to lend on the eight side was the best on the streets of land or much of the land. A story begins after he died. If you could have imagined the impact his death would have on American society, but it did on politics, on black culture, on the sports world, on drug use and abuse. This podcast series, Len Bias A Mixed Legacy will explain all of that in detail, but for the purposes of this introduction segment, we will discuss those topics more generally within the context of why is the legacy of Len Bias so important still today. We will also hear throughout this segment the voice of Justin Tinsley, an ESPN commentator and a culture and sportswriter for The Undefeated, as well as from others who have insight into the importance of Len's legacy. We are going to start this segment off talking with Clark Kellogg, and for that I'll throw it to Don Marcus. Do you think that you know, kids these days would listen to a story about len Bias, you know, and even if they didn't know who he was, maybe he never heard of him. But then if you you mentioned them, mentioned him to them, that all of a sudden he becomes even a different kind of figure now thirty five years later. I don't think there's any question. I don't specifically use his story, but I do on occasion highlight the consequences of choices. And stories are powerful, whether they're inspirational or whether they're sad or tragic. And when you can use stories that relate to your audience. And obviously we know that a lot of young folks, particularly young black males, are enamored with sports, and the NBA in particular and basketball, and to hear not only the great successes, but to hear some of the missteps, some of the tragedies that have unfolded as they relate to choices or missteps. But even sometimes it might not even be about that, It might just be the fragility of life just intends. He was only four months old when led Bias died. He first heard about Bias in the mid nineteen nineties from his uncle who was living in the Washington, d c. Area and apparently was a LN Bias fan. Here's just an explaining how we learned about Land from his uncle and what the Len Bias legacy has meant to him. And I just never forget being with him. One time, I may have been like nine, nine or ten, and we were talking about basketball, and I believe Michael Jordan was retired for the first time at that point, and I was telling him I really wish Michael Jordan would come back, and you know, I missed watching him play basketball. He was like, yeah, I wish Lynn Bias would have been around to to play Mike, you know, with the Celtics and see how that would have played out. And I at to that point, who was Lynn Bias? And so he kind of gave me a crash course at that point, he was like he was just a great player, one of the best college basketball players he had ever seen, and he was supposed to be great in the league, but unfortunately passed away. That he passed away from drugs. He drug overdose. But he was a great basketball player. So he's just always remembered as one of the big what ifs, not just in basketball, but just in life culturally, speaking of what could this guy have been? You know, who would he have become in the league, How might career arts and paths have been different had Lynn Bias stated around, he's kind of like a John Henry type type guy for my generation. So he's a he's a tall tale, but he's also even more so a cautionary tale for my generation. Just but you can't take you can't take talent for granted, and you can't take your time on this earth for green. Justin Tensley's perspective is important because he's in his mid thirties. He represents a younger generation that new Oland Bias but did not know much about him, and it appears Len's stories still resonates with his generation. Clark, why do you think Le's legacy is still so important to not just Justin's generation, but younger generations? You know, I think to the legacy component, um as as as as difficult as this might be, is that, um it's it's not only tragic, but it is a it's a cautionary tale for all of us and particularly for young folks. Um, here's a guy who was on top of the world. He was gifted and had optimized his gifts as a basketball player to realize the dream of being an NBA player, and in a moment or moments of a bad choice or decision around cocaine drug use, it costs him his life. And that is a message that resonates not just because it was drugs, but because life is fragile and sometimes the choices we may can be fatal. And that to me is a part of the other side of the legacy where it can be instructive. Sure, it was a tragedy, it was painful, and it doesn't go away for those closest to learn, and it's a reminder for all of us that the choices we make, the associations we have with others, we just have to be mindful that if we're not careful, it can it can sometimes end not just badly, but but fatally. Now let's bring this back to Justin Tinsley again. Justin is working on a book about Biggie Smalls, the rapper from the nine nineties. Biggie got caught up in gangs and drugs of that era and was killed in a drive by shooting. Justin ties the mandatory minimum prison sentence laws to that time of the nineteen nineties, he helps explain mandatory minimums. Here's justin connecting Biggie Smalls and Len Bias. So when you let into an album like Biggie Smalls's debut, Ready to Die, and he talks about being neck deep in the drug game and understanding, they're like, if I walk around this corner, if I sell it to the wrong person, like that could be the end of me, whether whether I'm killed or whether I go to jail for a long time. Because at that point the ninety four Crime Bill had had been around that I believe the EIGHTI six Crime Bill had proceeded that. So when we talk about these mandatory minimums, and we talk about this life or death experience in the streets selling drugs and being caught with even a small amount of paraphernali at that point in the late eighties and early nineties to lead to a long trip up state. And so when we talk about that, you could piece it back to Lynn biases death. It may not be direct, it may not be Biggie saying, oh you're making a rhyme about Lynn Bias. But you know when he was you know, when he talks about the streets is a short stop either slanging crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot. You know, you could piece that back to somebody like a Lym Bias, because that death changed everything and from what from what I've read, almost like in the blink of an hour to snap of fingers, so that when we talked about Lyn Bias culturally, we talked talked about how his death in so many ways caused and you know, an over an overreaction by the federal government, and that overreaction directly impacted our community and you know, people who look like us, So Lenn Biases, we talk about basketball, but it always tends to drift off into just life and how the cultural ramifications of just his talent and his death and the legislation that was the past past. Immediately after that, once you start to peel back the layers, Lynn Bias his name is always going to come up because when you when you mentioned somebody like Lynn Bias his name to people in my generation, and it's always like, yeah, he could have been something like at least that's what I know of him like we were robbed of seeing a potentially all time great talent. People who we have interviewed for this podcast series had a mix of opinions about why Len's story is so important today. Let's hear some of those voices. We will identify them on the back side of the comments. I think one of the most important messages that students can glean from leun Bias the story is that we all have challenges. How you deal with those challenges will define ultimately who you are. And I think one of the most important messages we can glean is to do the best you can to find healthy ways to cope with what you're struggling with, because drugs is never the answer, and ultimately you're not gonna benefit from doing that as much as you might think, because all drugs and alcohol do is mask the issue. I think again, this is the idea of a of a star in full bloom that ultimately had that had that flame doubt by a mistake, and this is not the only kind of mistake that you can make to doubst the flame and to recognize that no matter how good you are, no matter how good you think you are, you know you're vulnerable. That many coaches used to UH preach to their players about H making good decisions. I think for the entire generation of young UH men in this area, young men and women UM, and particularly those in the athletic community, this story rings as a very, very tragic story that UH will be used for a long long time to help other people recognize our decisions and mistakes matter in life because all of those choices, all of those decisions can have impacts that reverberate far beyond what you think of in the moment. That last comment came from Ed tap Scott. Ed is the personnel director for the Minnesota Timberwolves. He's a former college and NBA coach. He's a former NBA executive, and he grew up in Washington, d C. And New lend Well. Before Ed, we heard from lenn Elmore, a former Maryland All American and an NBA veteran, and Bonnie Bernstein, a former Maryland gymnast and a prominent sportscaster that control them the game and he made him a name. Next on Len Bias, a mixed legacy born ready Len's basketball life a second linning game, he made him name. This story of This podcast series is based on the book Born Ready. The Mixed Legacy of len Bias is published by Go Grady Media. The series is produced by Go Grady Media in partnership with Octagon Entertainment. This segment was produced by Davon Grady and Don Marcus. It was written by Davon Grady. Technical production provided by Octagon Entertainment. Theme music provided by m C long Shot, but production assistance was provided by Kevin McNulty, Kino Quagliata, Lauren Ross, Georgia Brown, Katy Fair, Jamal William, Kelsey Mannus and Enzo Alvaringa. Matt dow Hurst is providing social media assistant and special thanks to the University of Maryland and American University for providing interns. The Decision Education Foundation is a content and promotional partner of this podcast series. For more information, go to go grade Media dot com, g O g R A d Y M E d i A dot com and a reminder don't forget to subscribe to lend Bias A Mixed Legacy. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Well, Lambias is important today, not just for his basketball. He's important because he literally took the bullet, no pun intended. I've never ever had anything to do with cocaine ever, I've never been curious about it. But I'm definitely not curious about it because of what happened to my friendly buyers. This is the idea of a of a star in full bloom that ultimately had that had that flamed doubt by a mistake. People should recognize this as, you know, a lesson, a tragedy along the lines of a Greek tragedy. If you will um you know this is uh in many ways, this is icorous flying to to the sun and only then have those wings melted and plummet to the earth. So in the world, his death has made him like a modest you. You could have everything in the world going for you for you to think you want to do something that's as silly as not on one line of cocaine. You should know better that he's important because he can show you that you can be on top of the world one second and then not a part of the world. Next, the Eight Side Network and Go Grady Media presents lend Bys a mixed legacy. I'm surprised to lend by story is not being told on a yearly basis when new athletes come into college or into high school to learn by story is one of the better stories you can use to get an individual or team to do the right thing. The French to the boy that can show that the game he made him a name game. Many people from my generation I'm in my early sixties vividly remember the day Land Bias died and how they reacted to the shocking news. Sure it helped if you were a Maryland fan, which I am, and it helped more if you were a Maryland athlete i was, but you didn't have to have such a direct connection to the University of Maryland to have your emotions tazard after finding out Bias died, some knew him from their home roots or from playing basketball together. Derek Whittenberg grew up not far from Land and played basketball within against him. He was a national champion with NC State and later a college coach. I'll never forget it. And I heard the news and I couldn't believe it. I put over the side of the road. I cried like a crowd, like a two Ero, And there was a seven year old boy who became a Celtics fan after they picked Lennon in the draft. His name is Matt Roboto. He found refuge in a comfortable place after he found out lenn died. I just sprinted out of the house crying, like when I sprint it outside, went up like, went up to my tree out and we had had a little tree for it. I sat up there for a little bit and then um, you know when all my swing sat swaying, swang, swang. And still three decades later, some still can't forget. J Billis played against Bias for four years while at Duke. I'll never stop thinking about it. There'll never be a time when you know, the draft, the draft passes and I won't think about you know, lenn Bias died right right about now. The death of Bias prompted those reactions because of who he was, the top college basketball player in It was because of how he played basketball with a consistent and controlled intensity. It was because of what he was expected to become, perhaps the greatest player ever, and because of how he died shortly after consuming a large amount of cocaine and suffering a heart attack. Most people know that much about Bias, even those who are from younger generations, but there is so much more to lens life and his legacy. That's why Go Gradymedia and Octagon Entertainment have partnered to produce a podcast series that examines in great detail Len's life and legacy. This is Davon Grady, the president of Go Grady Media and executive producer of this series. I'm the author of the book Born Ready, The Mixed Legacy of Len Bias. The book was published ten years ago this month. I'm here to help introduce to you a groundbreaking piece of broadcast journalism. It's a podcast series called Len Bias A Mixed Legacy. The series is based heavily on the book, and it examines Len's life and legacy from his teen years when he learned how to play basketball through the thirty five years since his death. Joining me as a producer on the podcast is longtime sports journalist Don Marcus. Don joined the Baltimore Sun in and covered the last year of Len's career, and he reported on Maryland athletics for the Sun for much of the next few decades. He's also the author of a book on things Maryland fans should do before they die. Don has also reported on the NBA extensively. He is one of the most respected journalists covering Meryland athletics. Welcome Don, Thanks Dave, I too remember exactly where I was when I heard the news. I just finished covering the US Open golf tournament on Long Island and was starting what I hoped to be a two week vacation with my wife. I had played golf in the morning and returned into the B and B where we were staying. I was stunned and saddened to hear about the most talented college player had ever covered personally on a beat, dying at age two days after being picked number two by the Boston Celtics. My wife asked me what I thought happened, and I said I wouldn't be surprised if they found out it was drugs. Why was I suspicious? Drugs were prevalent in the nineteen eighties, not just among athletes, and Bias was already reported to have been celebrating with friends and teammates in his dorm suite. It was one of the few times in my career as a reporter that I regretted being right, You're listening to Lynn Bias a Mixed Legacy on the eight Side Network. We will start off focusing on one topic, who was Lenn Bias, What made him so great? And what was the tragedy that defines him more than his accomplishments as a basketball player. Throughout this segment, we will feature clips from interviews done for the podcast series We Held. They will add depth to our discussion. To help deepen that discussion further, we are joined by Clark Kellog, a former college and NBA player and now a college basketball analyst for CBS Sports. Clark's college career ended as Lent Biases began. He was an All Big Ten player at Ohio State. After his junior year, Clark was the number eight overall pick in the NBA Draft by the Indiana Pacers. Clark and others wonder what Lens NBA career might have been like had he stayed healthy, and Clark has often thought about what biases career arc might have looked like had he not died at the age of twenty two. Welcome Clark to start off. Who was Led Bias from your perspective, well, from my perspective, being a guy who was at that time with the Indiana Pacers, still attached to the college game, and that I played at Ohio State, so I kept up with a big ten in college basketball in general. Um, he was a dynamic, explosive high level player. I mean, two time Player of the Year in the a c C. Um had a charisma about his game that was special in addition to the athleticism, the finishing ability, the way he played, the exuberance he played with, the explosiveness. UM. So I only got to witness that from Afar, But being a guy who kind of was a student of the game from the time I fell in love with it at ten years old, and then having been able to enjoy some success myself at the high school, college and pro level, you get a sense of what guys are like, even if you haven't been on the court with you watch him enough and see what they do. And he had a huge, huge, um ceiling in terms of what he could have become as an NBA player. I mean, you put up the numbers he did his last two seasons at Maryland in the a c C against that type of competition, and you look at his his package, his tool kit, UH quickness, explosiveness, Uh, really nice stroke, mid range game that would have probably stretched out to to deep range. Uh. The ability to finish in the open court. All of those things would would have translated, I think to really outstanding NBA career, perhaps multile time All Star career, had he not come to his um terrible and unfortunate um death. Now let's bring it Don Marcus to give us a general overview of Len Bias the player. Don you covered Maryland basketball for the Baltimore Sun during his senior year, and you would cover the NBA prior to that for Newsday. Tell us about Len Bias the basketball player when you started covering him and compare him to other NBA talent at that time. Dave, the interesting thing about covering Bias for a senior in Maryland was that they had just finished covering another future Hall of Famer, Chris Mullen at St. John's, and I have been around yet another Patrick Ewing at Georgetown. While writing about the Big East, my first Final Four was and I watched Michael Jordan hit the go ahead jumper that helped North Carolina beat Georgetown in New Orleans. I had spent time with Jordan during his last two years in Chapel Hell. I really didn't know how good Bias was until I began to cover Maryland. By the end of that season, he had surpassed all the other great players that had covered Jordan, included people knew Lend a teenager, as well as Brian Waller. Bias and Waller learned to play basketball at the Columbia Park Recreation Center, also known as the Wreck, with the help of coach Johnny Walker. Waller and Bias were later high school teammates for two years. Bias grew up in the Columbia Park community and land Over, Maryland, some ten miles from the University of Maryland campus. The Wreck is located a couple of blocks from the house where Lynn grew up. Waller did not talk to us for this podcast, but he did to me from my book about Land. Here's what he said about Land. Learning the game at the Wreck, Johnny gave us everything that wasn't in the rule book. When you're not used to it, you whine and cry. People were fouling Lend all the time. No matter how much you wind, Johnny was still killing him. On Monday and Wednesday, as we'd play against the older guys in the gym. That's how they played. You either step up or you don't. It's important to note that Bias, as best we know, did not play organized basketball until the ninth grade. He was cut from his junior high team in the seventh and eighth grades. Lend learned the game primarily from two people, Johnny Walker, his mentor and coach at the Wreck, and Bob Wagner, his coach at Northwestern High School. Wagner helped transform Land from a baby to a bruiser Bias during the varsity his sophomore year. Wagner quickly noticed that Bios struggled to deal with adversity and Leonard wasn't a handful to manage. I mean, that's one of the reasons I was straight with him and everybody else. Why in what ways? Oh, he was a cry baby, he was a whiner. He you know, he had to open his mouth. Most of the time. He was right, but he would try to talk back to the officials. He'd slam the ball once in a while. We will provide more details about Len's high school and college careers in the next segment of this podcast series, but we will address it here with a general observation from Molly Glassman, who I worked with at the Baltimore Sun. Molly covered high school basketball in Maryland when Lynn was at Northwestern and later had the Maryland basketball be at the Evening Sun when Bias joined the team. She later became my editor at the Morning Sun when the papers merged. I had known of Lenny, you know, as a as a junior at Northwestern, so you know, his reputation as a as a strong local high school player had been established. So when he signed with when left he signed him with Maryland, UM, you know, it was big news that that he uh was signed. It wasn't as big though as Adrian Branch, who was from Damatha and got far more publicity in high school. So yeah, he was a He was considered a local guy and a public school star, but not quite in the in the top echelon of recruits. I hadn't seen him play in high school, but he had a reputation as a a guy who could play all around the hoop. He was a good shooter, but he was also a strong rebounder in high school and then UM when he came to Maryland as a as a freshman, again he was pretty much overshadowed by Branch as the big name recruit. And it was towards the end of his freshman year that we started to say, you know, you know, this kid is is going to be great. He was, you know, he always had the reputation as being somebody raw, you know who really needed to develop a defensively and offensively Maryland started owing five in the a SEC during bias senior year, in my first year on the beat, he wound up carrying him back to the n c A Tournament. It was helped by that memorable thirty five point performance to beat number one North Carolina on the road. It was the first loss from the tar Heels in the then brand new Deemdom. Thanks Don, Let's now bring it back to Clark. Kellogg, Clark, what did you notice most about Land when he was transforming into a dominant college player? So from his junior year too, I thought his senior year I saw enough to where I thought he just refined what he had. I liked his ability to score mid range and step out and knockdown shots. Finishing transition. He was a better than average rebounder. The boy. When we come back, we will discuss Len Bias the person name never became m Boy. Welcome back to the introduction to the podcast series Lend Bias A Mixed Legacy. This is Davon Grady, producer of the series along with Don Marcus. Before the break, we explained who Len Bias was as a basketball player. Now we will frame Len Bias the person. Bob Wagner, Len's high school coach, recalled an adventurous side of Len's personality. Uh. The thing that Leonard was good at is he smiled. He took time to you know, with the girls and the kids, and it's a charm. But it wasn't a funny thing. Answer who he was and enjoyed people. And I think people will work. And you know, you like Leonard whether you played basketball or not, if you knew it. Um, And I think that hurt people, you know, and he was he was not running around wild. Uh. You know as a kid in high school. You know, I've never and the kid a Trankopierre or anything else. I always said about Larry. Did you put him with good kids? He's the best kid with the good kids. You put in with the guys and he can be the best. Uh. For example, he he didn't play his first game in high school and the Pom Pom sponsor had left the classroom open with a bunch of candy bars in it, which was going to be a fundraiser. So what we had was activity buses. So by the time we finished school or practice and the buses came to take the kids home, the kids would study, or they'd wander the halls or whatever. Well, of course they wandered in there and the guys took some candy bars, so that was his punishment there. One of the guys from the DC area who got to know Lenn pretty well was Derek Whittenberg. Derek was a star at the mat the high school, and later won a national title at NC State. He was a few years older than Lenn, but remembers playing pickup games with him on the outdoor courts at the Wreck. He got to know Lenny pretty out lely. Was very quiet, very quiet guy, very quiet and somewhat shot um. Unless he was around his friends. He was open and friendly, but I wouldn't say he was this party animal, a guy who just like I wanted to be out all the time. I think he was. He had a lot of shodness to him, and he had a wonderful person down the big smile, But I don't think he was just outgoing God Dave. One of the best insights offered of Lynn the person as he went from high school to college comes from Johnny Holiday. Johnny has been the radio played by play voice of Maryland basketball and football since nineteen seventy nine. My recollections of when was what a nice kid he was a so I've spoken down to earth, as down to earth as you could be before he became a superstar, of course. And I remember going to Northwestern High School the day he signed is a letter of antet to come to the University of Maryland, and sitting and talking with him and realizing that, well, this kid's very shy. His kids are very quiet. This kid is not going to be a very good interview. He didn't say anything at all. I remember the first year, the first couple of interviews we did with him, Um, it was like a lot of yes and no answers and even sometimes nodding of his head. And I would stop the recorder of remindling that this is what you're gonna have to talk. You know, they can't see you nodding your head and big smile okay, okay, And like all young players, when you stick a microphone in front of them, they moved back, and I kept moving in, and he'd moved back, and I moved in and he'd moved back, and it got to be a He got to be one of the best interviews. And he was guarded and what he had to say, because you're not gonna throw the your teammates under the bus, and you're not gonna throw the coaches under the bus. But he was He was always fun to talk to, always fun to be around. John Sally met Lynn Bias at the Five Star Basketball camp when they were both in high school. At Georgia Tech, he played four years against Bias and he got to know when very well. He was introverted, um, really quiet, but he would show up on the court. Never brag adosious, if that is even a word. Um he never. He wasn't one of those people. He would give you the business and that be in like even if you were the chair. He would like, calm down, calm down. He didn't like that. He didn't like all that high five in jumping around. Calming down. He would always see Lenny be like yo, chill till As Lynn's career progressed at Maryland, he started to feel some pressure not only from basketball, but also in his personal life. I'd like to play a sound bite of Bob Wagner, his high school coach, talking about a discussion you had with Lenn. Coach Wagner says Len would stop by the high school to talk with him. He mentioned a conversation that focused on a common trapping of being a superstar athlete, said Mr Wagner. He says, um, you know, I'm having fun, but he says, you know, I get tired of this. You know, girls coming by, I'm trying to study, and the girls combined and New Year note was early on. He says, if I say no, then they'll go like you were with her, or what's wrong with you? Or don You've talked about how difficult Lenn was to deal with during his senior year, can you expand on that. I had certainly had my share of covering reluctant superstars or athletes who just didn't like talking to the press. I've been one of the few college basketball writers who was invited to Georgetown to interview Patrick Ewing for the first time. By the time I began covering Bias. He had pretty much become the player who everyone wanted to talk to in College Park. For a late season profile, he blew me off for to sit down interviews at Coldfield House. I finally got him on the flight home after a game against Wake Forest was fogged in the PR guy told me I had a captive audience, and when Bias saw me coming toward him, he smiled. I told them, Lenn, you've been a pleasure to watch and a pain in the asked to cover he laughed and said, I respect that you're being honest. Here again is my former colleague, Molly Glassman. By the time he was a junior and senior, uh, he was less accessible and um harder to read than he was when he was younger. When he was younger, I certainly remember how much he talked about he loved to draw. At one point he wanted to be an interior designer. Um you know, he was talking about that artistic side of him his personality, and um you know, I'm not sure where that went, but I don't recall that really at all his senior year, that that was part of who he was. He was He always seemed to have some some group of people waiting for him at the end of that Coldfield House. You know that where the locker rooms came out he was. He wasn't going back to his dorm to to fill his sketch pad after games. I don't think he was going to make it, as the number two makes about it, Boston something it would have been. So you're listening to lend on the eight side was the best on the streets of land or much of the land. A story begins after he died. If you could have imagined the impact his death would have on American society, but it did on politics, on black culture, on the sports world, on drug use and abuse. This podcast series, Len Bias A Mixed Legacy will explain all of that in detail, but for the purposes of this introduction segment, we will discuss those topics more generally within the context of why is the legacy of Len Bias so important still today. We will also hear throughout this segment the voice of Justin Tinsley, an ESPN commentator and a culture and sportswriter for The Undefeated, as well as from others who have insight into the importance of Len's legacy. We are going to start this segment off talking with Clark Kellogg, and for that I'll throw it to Don Marcus. Do you think that you know, kids these days would listen to a story about len Bias, you know, and even if they didn't know who he was, maybe he never heard of him. But then if you you mentioned them, mentioned him to them, that all of a sudden he becomes even a different kind of figure now thirty five years later. I don't think there's any question. I don't specifically use his story, but I do on occasion highlight the consequences of choices. And stories are powerful, whether they're inspirational or whether they're sad or tragic. And when you can use stories that relate to your audience. And obviously we know that a lot of young folks, particularly young black males, are enamored with sports, and the NBA in particular and basketball, and to hear not only the great successes, but to hear some of the missteps, some of the tragedies that have unfolded as they relate to choices or missteps. But even sometimes it might not even be about that, It might just be the fragility of life just intends. He was only four months old when led Bias died. He first heard about Bias in the mid nineteen nineties from his uncle who was living in the Washington, d c. Area and apparently was a LN Bias fan. Here's just an explaining how we learned about Land from his uncle and what the Len Bias legacy has meant to him. And I just never forget being with him. One time, I may have been like nine, nine or ten, and we were talking about basketball, and I believe Michael Jordan was retired for the first time at that point, and I was telling him I really wish Michael Jordan would come back, and you know, I missed watching him play basketball. He was like, yeah, I wish Lynn Bias would have been around to to play Mike, you know, with the Celtics and see how that would have played out. And I at to that point, who was Lynn Bias? And so he kind of gave me a crash course at that point, he was like he was just a great player, one of the best college basketball players he had ever seen, and he was supposed to be great in the league, but unfortunately passed away. That he passed away from drugs. He drug overdose. But he was a great basketball player. So he's just always remembered as one of the big what ifs, not just in basketball, but just in life culturally, speaking of what could this guy have been? You know, who would he have become in the league, How might career arts and paths have been different had Lynn Bias stated around, he's kind of like a John Henry type type guy for my generation. So he's a he's a tall tale, but he's also even more so a cautionary tale for my generation. Just but you can't take you can't take talent for granted, and you can't take your time on this earth for green. Justin Tensley's perspective is important because he's in his mid thirties. He represents a younger generation that new Oland Bias but did not know much about him, and it appears Len's stories still resonates with his generation. Clark, why do you think Le's legacy is still so important to not just Justin's generation, but younger generations? You know, I think to the legacy component, um as as as as difficult as this might be, is that, um it's it's not only tragic, but it is a it's a cautionary tale for all of us and particularly for young folks. Um, here's a guy who was on top of the world. He was gifted and had optimized his gifts as a basketball player to realize the dream of being an NBA player, and in a moment or moments of a bad choice or decision around cocaine drug use, it costs him his life. And that is a message that resonates not just because it was drugs, but because life is fragile and sometimes the choices we may can be fatal. And that to me is a part of the other side of the legacy where it can be instructive. Sure, it was a tragedy, it was painful, and it doesn't go away for those closest to learn, and it's a reminder for all of us that the choices we make, the associations we have with others, we just have to be mindful that if we're not careful, it can it can sometimes end not just badly, but but fatally. Now let's bring this back to Justin Tinsley again. Justin is working on a book about Biggie Smalls, the rapper from the nine nineties. Biggie got caught up in gangs and drugs of that era and was killed in a drive by shooting. Justin ties the mandatory minimum prison sentence laws to that time of the nineteen nineties, he helps explain mandatory minimums. Here's justin connecting Biggie Smalls and Len Bias. So when you let into an album like Biggie Smalls's debut, Ready to Die, and he talks about being neck deep in the drug game and understanding, they're like, if I walk around this corner, if I sell it to the wrong person, like that could be the end of me, whether whether I'm killed or whether I go to jail for a long time. Because at that point the ninety four Crime Bill had had been around that I believe the EIGHTI six Crime Bill had proceeded that. So when we talk about these mandatory minimums, and we talk about this life or death experience in the streets selling drugs and being caught with even a small amount of paraphernali at that point in the late eighties and early nineties to lead to a long trip up state. And so when we talk about that, you could piece it back to Lynn biases death. It may not be direct, it may not be Biggie saying, oh you're making a rhyme about Lynn Bias. But you know when he was you know, when he talks about the streets is a short stop either slanging crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot. You know, you could piece that back to somebody like a Lym Bias, because that death changed everything and from what from what I've read, almost like in the blink of an hour to snap of fingers, so that when we talked about Lyn Bias culturally, we talked talked about how his death in so many ways caused and you know, an over an overreaction by the federal government, and that overreaction directly impacted our community and you know, people who look like us, So Lenn Biases, we talk about basketball, but it always tends to drift off into just life and how the cultural ramifications of just his talent and his death and the legislation that was the past past. Immediately after that, once you start to peel back the layers, Lynn Bias his name is always going to come up because when you when you mentioned somebody like Lynn Bias his name to people in my generation, and it's always like, yeah, he could have been something like at least that's what I know of him like we were robbed of seeing a potentially all time great talent. People who we have interviewed for this podcast series had a mix of opinions about why Len's story is so important today. Let's hear some of those voices. We will identify them on the back side of the comments. I think one of the most important messages that students can glean from leun Bias the story is that we all have challenges. How you deal with those challenges will define ultimately who you are. And I think one of the most important messages we can glean is to do the best you can to find healthy ways to cope with what you're struggling with, because drugs is never the answer, and ultimately you're not gonna benefit from doing that as much as you might think, because all drugs and alcohol do is mask the issue. I think again, this is the idea of a of a star in full bloom that ultimately had that had that flame doubt by a mistake, and this is not the only kind of mistake that you can make to doubst the flame and to recognize that no matter how good you are, no matter how good you think you are, you know you're vulnerable. That many coaches used to UH preach to their players about H making good decisions. I think for the entire generation of young UH men in this area, young men and women UM, and particularly those in the athletic community, this story rings as a very, very tragic story that UH will be used for a long long time to help other people recognize our decisions and mistakes matter in life because all of those choices, all of those decisions can have impacts that reverberate far beyond what you think of in the moment. That last comment came from Ed tap Scott. Ed is the personnel director for the Minnesota Timberwolves. He's a former college and NBA coach. He's a former NBA executive, and he grew up in Washington, d C. And New lend Well. Before Ed, we heard from lenn Elmore, a former Maryland All American and an NBA veteran, and Bonnie Bernstein, a former Maryland gymnast and a prominent sportscaster that control them the game and he made him a name. Next on Len Bias, a mixed legacy born ready Len's basketball life a second linning game, he made him name. This story of This podcast series is based on the book Born Ready. The Mixed Legacy of len Bias is published by Go Grady Media. The series is produced by Go Grady Media in partnership with Octagon Entertainment. This segment was produced by Davon Grady and Don Marcus. It was written by Davon Grady. Technical production provided by Octagon Entertainment. Theme music provided by m C long Shot, but production assistance was provided by Kevin McNulty, Kino Quagliata, Lauren Ross, Georgia Brown, Katy Fair, Jamal William, Kelsey Mannus and Enzo Alvaringa. Matt dow Hurst is providing social media assistant and special thanks to the University of Maryland and American University for providing interns. The Decision Education Foundation is a content and promotional partner of this podcast series. For more information, go to go grade Media dot com, g O g R A d Y M E d i A dot com and a reminder don't forget to subscribe to lend Bias A Mixed Legacy. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen to your podcasts.