But he was not under my jurisdiction in any shape or form. Flowers added to the memorial appear on the bottom of the memorial or here on the Flowers tab. In December 1990, Jay Bias, the quiet kid I had interviewed about his big brother's death, was shot and killed in the parking lot of a shopping center in Hyattsville, Md., apparently because . HYATTSVILLE, Md. Self. There was an exchange of words, Polk said. He told Curry he planned to buy an engagement ring for his girlfriend. Oops, something didn't work. But there were federal laws, hurriedly passed by Congress, and those laws decreed that drug offenders were subject to mandatory minimum sentences, and those who trafficked in crack were especially susceptible. Len Bias attacked the rim like no other player of his size has ever done in college basketball. UPPER MARLBORO, Md. It's not about athletes. Even before he was drafted by the Celtics, Bias had developed an affinity for the high life. Year should not be greater than current year. Thanks for using Find a Grave, if you have any feedback we would love to hear from you. Younger brother of Len Bias, All-American basketball player from Univ. "COMPARISON RUINS CONTENTMENT!" No one wanted to believe it, but this was the new reality. Jay Bias. He had no criminal record. Time has been served, and the bodies have been buried, and a mother continues to tell the only story she knows, the only story she cares to believe. Driesell says. Younger brother of Len Bias, All-American basketball player from Univ. Another man was cut by flying glass and was taken to Leland Memorial where he was treated and released. Each defendant claimed the other opened fire, however. Include gps location with grave photos where possible. At TCU: possible cash payments from boosters to football players. "Money," James Bias would lament in the weeks afterward. Bias had returned to school to see his close friends following a whirlwind NBA draft weekend. Yet Leonard Bias was also 22 years old, just coming to terms with his own maturity. SINOPSIS. That is now widely acknowledged by both Democrats and Republicans and borne out in studies by advocacy groups like The Sentencing Project and Families Against Mandatory Minimums. "I had a guy who called me and said, 'Listen, he wasn't doing lines of cocaine,'" Herzog recalls. He was 20 years old, the son of a high school principal with a Ph.D., but he still reverted to sucking his thumb during stressful moments. "One time he knocked on my door and he had a dollar bill and he said, 'Try this,'" Long told the court. At Vanderbilt (Vanderbilt! Amid the fury and panic and ignorance, amid what Sterling calls a "legislative frenzy," Congress acted in a bipartisan fashion, passing the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. Len Bias was an American basketball player who died due to a drug overdose. Bias' advisers claimed to have told him, in the days before the draft, that if he even happened to be in a car with someone smoking a joint, he should remove himself immediately. We're so jaded now that if it's a real medical condition, we're almost surprised.". Hyattsville, Prince George's County, Maryland, USA. He was one of four children born to James Bias Jr and Dr Lonise Bias. To this day, they have spoken about it only rarely, though Tribble, along with several of Bias' Maryland teammates, has recently talked to a local filmmaker, Kirk Fraser, whose documentary on Bias reportedly will be released later this year. t's true, what she says about the graves. Basketball . He was selected by the Boston Celtics as the second overall pick in the 1986 NBA draft on June 17, and died two days later from cardiac arrhythmia induced by a cocaine overdose. Where are the flaws in such a story? Toxicological studies for alcohol and other drugs were negative. COLLEGE PARK, MARYLAND - AUGUST 23: Len Bias' casket leaves the University of Maryland. Found more than one record for entered Email, You need to confirm this account before you can sign in. All across the country, we began to question everything we thought we understood about drugs and athletes and our perceptions of modern celebrity. The Len Bias Story. "There was nothing I did wrong -- what did I do wrong?" Failed to report flower. James and Lonise Bias are going on their 26th year of marriage. The graves, tucked together like this, are a stark testimony to the complexity of Lonise Bias' grief. Here is how this element of the Bias saga progressed: The speaker of the House of Representatives at the time was a Democrat named Thomas Phillip "Tip" O'Neill Jr., and Tip was an old-school Boston politico, and you can imagine how a politician with ties to both D.C. and Boston, two cities devastated by the Bias tragedy, would react the morning after such an event. An email has been sent to the person who requested the photo informing them that you have fulfilled their request, There is an open photo request for this memorial. Oops, we were unable to send the email. The league was recovering from its cocaine '70s era . COLLEGE PARK, Md. He had enrolled at Prince George's Community College, but still had aspirations for a Division I basketball career at Georgetown, and he was something of a playground virtuoso, whose vertical leap was once measured at 43 inches. "I guess that's the good that came out of it.". He clashed with university chancellor John Slaughter, a dignified man with a background in engineering, and with athletic director Dick Dull, who had extended Driesell's contract by a decade just one year earlier. cemeteries found within miles of your location will be saved to your photo volunteer list. Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. They got into an argument. Here, though, is what's weirdest of all about Lonise Bias: She, of all people, does not believe the events of that day were unjust. Verify and try again. Its nice to live in a country where everyone can get a fair trial., Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. One, Terry Long, placed the handle of a pair of scissors in Bias' mouth to prevent him from biting his tongue; another, David Gregg, held Bias' legs. But something wasn't right. Please ensure you have given Find a Grave permission to access your location in your browser settings. According to reports, the sales clerk had accused Jay of flirting with his wife, and Jay left and got into his car, and the suspect drove up behind him in the parking lot and shot him in the back. An athlete's personal life was still sketchy territory. "Put him in with good people, and he'd be the best there, too.". OPINION: He was the younger brother of Len Bias. In a tragic epilogue to the story of Len Bias's death, the Bias family lost his younger brother, Jay, just four years later. . A system error has occurred. Len Bias. He started fights. Less than two days later, he would be dead. He sought solace on the court, but what he carried, both within himself and through the projections of others, were a mythic set of expectations, as if Jay could carry on what his brother could not. The victim was Len Bias' younger brother. At Baylor, basketball coach Jim Haller resigned amid allegations he gave a player money for car payments. I went to see them not long after I heard Lonise Bias tell an incredible story to a group of South Carolina high school students: While witnessing the burial of her son Jay, she looked down and realized she was standing on the grave of her eldest son, Leonard. Also, it should be noted that we were in the heart of the Reagan era, at the midpoint of the second term of a president Time magazine put on its July 7 cover. There's no way he can die.". cemeteries found in Suitland, Prince George's County, Maryland, USA will be saved to your photo volunteer list. 86-999 Biography. View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro . It looks like utter senseless violence, Polk said. And I'm saying, 'Holy cow.' Were society's priorities so utterly skewed that we couldn't see the path down which we'd guided a star athlete? Leonard Kevin Bias (November 18, 1963 - June 19, 1986) was an American college basketball player who attended the University of Maryland. And Brian probably figured, 'Well, doggone, this is easy.' Michael Weinreb's book "Game of Kings: A Year Among the Oddballs and Geniuses Who Make Up America's Top High School Chess Team" is now available in paperback from Gotham Books. As manager of this memorial you can add or update the memorial using the Edit button below. And it doesn't matter that no one in this room knows who she is anymore, or who her sons were, or where they came from, or why her story means anything at all. Bias to come out to the parking lot and they would take care of business there. You can always change this later in your Account settings. After reading Thinking, Fast and Slow by the economist, psychologist and professor, Dr. David Kahneman, not only are a lot of decisions made on a daily basis but my decision making process involves the interplay of two systems. There were no secrets anymore. Are you sure that you want to report this flower to administrators as offensive or abusive? Perhaps, in burnishing a legend, the claims of Driesell and Lonise Bias (who still believes her son had never tried cocaine before, and might, in fact, have tried it accidentally, or even been poisoned that night) actually proved far more positive for society than the truth might have. Earlier this month, Smialek's assistant, Dr. Dennis Smyth, who performed the autopsy on Bias, said the redness in Bias's windpipe and a high concentration of cocaine in his blood indicated the athlete "most likely" smoked cocaine rather than snorted it in powder form through his nose. ", On Dec. 4, 1990, Jay Bias, then 20 years old, went to a shopping mall. Len and Jay Bias, brothers who died less than five years apart, are literally now resting side by side. It is too late to turn back. To use this feature, use a newer browser. UPPER MARLBORO, Md. We're here to help. On December 5, 1990, 20-year-old Jay Bias, Len's younger brother, was gunned down in a shopping mall parking lot, just a few miles from the University of Maryland. Curry, who had been driving Brown's car, in which a one-pound rock of crack was hidden, imagined he would pay a price; he imagined he would serve a short jail sentence and then be given a chance to atone for the sins of his naivete. Len Bias was experimenting with cocaine for the first time that night. Foley also discounted Eilands argument that he did not know what Tyler was going to do. ", So, what has changed? At Clemson: steroids. I do not know whether he would have been better/as good as/in the same stratosphere as Michael Jordan if he had lived to play in the National Basketball Association. But Brian Tribble was also (presumably) prodigiously high, and this was really happening to him -- his friend was having a seizure on the floor of his suite, 1103 Washington Hall, on the University of Maryland campus. "I can remember speaking to this woman once before Len died, and she had said, 'Things are going to be so wonderful for you all,'" Lonise Bias says. He was an outstanding basketball player who died of a cocaine overdose two days after being drafted into the National Basketball Association (NBA). Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, says Bias' death prompted a . Bias may have been caught in the middle of a dispute that had nothing to do with him, Polk said. Jesse Jackson after a private funeral service for the college basketball star at the University of . He fell into tantrums. What isn't redemptive and appealing -- what isn't downright American -- about a narrative like this one? It also meant both Democrats and Republicans were swept up in hyperbole and emotional appeals, in trying to out-tough each other, in a debate swept clean of nuance. Family members linked to this person will appear here. What if he just wants to be on television?' We would prefer to view the death of Len Bias not as an indictment of an entire system rife with hypocrisy, but merely a poor decision by a young man who should have known better. This is America, after all, and it does not take long for tragedy to bleed into political stratagems. I can say that from his family's standpoint, he wasn't living in the ghetto. Len Bias was using crack cocaine that night. The voice of the caller was slurred and hesitant, and the voice kept repeating the victim's name until the dispatcher declared, "It doesn't matter what his name is." Because she knows she is right. 2 pick in the NBA draft in New York, June 17, 1986. Join the conversation about "The Day Innocence Died.". You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself." Leonard Kevin "Len" Bias (November 18, 1963 - June 19, 1986) was a first-team All-American college basketball forward at the University of Maryland. 4: Said by many former ACC players and coaches to be one of the greatest to play in that conference. As a nation -- even in the wake of the January space shuttle explosion that the president blamed on "a carelessness that grew out of success" -- we were generally optimistic. University of Maryland; Boston Celtics; Occupation. Like the mourners gathered outside the Pilgrim A.M.E. Church in Washington for Bias' wake, America was stunned by the basketball star's death. The Biases' attorney, Wayne Curry, says the family is about $21,000 in debt from loans taken out by Len ($15,000) before the NBA draft and by his father ($6,000) to pay for Len's $1 million disability insurance with Lloyd's of London. As the legend grew and Maryland students hung life-sized posters in their rooms (Caption: I'm Bias), Bias developed an affinity for the high life that drove the cultural narrative of the era, a high life he imagined he'd be living soon enough. The younger brother of the late University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias was shot and killed today while driving out of the Prince George's Plaza shopping center after an apparent argument when he was shopping at a jewelry store. For a time in prison, Curry and Tribble shared a cell. Derrick Curry dreamed of following in Bias' footsteps on the court. There is one extraordinary sequence -- available via YouTube -- against North Carolina during his senior season that illustrates Bias' ability to redefine the parameters of his position: With his team trailing by eight, Bias hit a long jump shot, then galloped toward the baseline, stole the inbounds pass and, with a defender closing, dunked with his back to the basket, before landing in a tangle of limbs on the floor. Please enter your email address and we will send you an email with a reset password code. Everything he says gives you hope for the next generation. For a moment, she is somewhere else, her gaze fixed on a table a few feet from where she sits in an office adorned with photographs of her posing next to presidents and congressmen as a well-compensated motivational speaker of some renown, as a proud foot soldier in the war on drugs. . This is no doubt a major reason why I have never touched cocaine myself, and why, several years ago, when an acquaintance of mine who was a product of the same generation tried cocaine for the first time, he thought immediately of Len Bias, as I'm sure hundreds or thousands of others did, too. And that's why I've decided to rank the Big Ten's basketball . "Curry needed what Brown's lifestyle offered: a casual acceptance of crime and danger; a casual defiance of the American power structure," Richard Leiby wrote in The Washington Post several years later. "Len would've wanted me to," said Jay, who would turn 16 the next day . He, too, was a basketball player at Northwestern High School, a fleet guard with Division I prospects who was a close friend and classmate of Len Bias' younger brother, Jay. This was just the opposite. This is a carousel with slides. Getting Started | Contributor Zone . After a year and more problems, this time with the Allegany Community College coaching staff, he quit school and took a job, hoping, at some point, to enroll at American University. His supervisors phoned the station's sports anchor, James Brown, and Statter went live on the air as the first reporter at Leland Memorial Hospital. Self. The grave marker reads:Leonard K. Bias. of Md., 1st round NBA draft pick of the Boston Celtics. She believes her son died for this very reason, to be a cautionary tale, to be a martyr. Len Bias' death shocked the world. I do know I was 13 when Len Bias died, and it scared the hell out of me. Len Bias: A Mixed Legacy is a multi-part series about the legacy of former Maryland basketball star Len Bias and the importance of making the right decision. It doesn't matter, because it is hard not to listen when a woman with this kind of overbearing presence IS TALKING RIGHT AT YOU. Police said Tyler shot Bias twice in the back last Dec. 4 as Bias was being driven away from a Hyattsville shopping mall, shortly after the two men had an argument in a jewelry store. At the hospital, Eric Bias, the last living male progeny of Lonise and James Bias, kept repeating the words, "My brother's not dead.". Translation on Find a Grave is an ongoing project. 30 for 30 Actor. It's all about making money for the university. They will recount a story that has been revealed over the years in bits and pieces, through leaks and rumors and sworn testimony, most notably in a Prince George's County courtroom more than a year after Bias' death, when Brian Tribble -- either a scapegoat or a murderer, depending upon your point of view -- went on trial, charged with providing the drugs that killed his friend. O'Neill was thinking about the midterm elections in November 1986; he was thinking about regaining political momentum from a popular second-term president. Prince George's County I'm sitting there listening to this guy and he's scaring the hell out of me. "Bud" Marshall happened to be running for re-election, and what better opening was there than for Marshall to find the persons/places/things that had killed Leonard Bias? and somehow make them sound authoritative rather than bombastic. Len Bias was born in Washington, District of Columbia. Eiland knows his friend is upset, Foley said. I do not know if he was the catalyst for another decades-long New England curse. Lefty's stubbornness also might have contributed to a certain myopia. Midway through his haircut, Curry saw a television news report about a shooting at the mall. James Bias, called "Jay" by relatives and friends, was 15 when his brother Len died from an overdose of nearly pure cocaine in a Leonardtown Hall dorm room at the College Park campus. Was it our fault? Sorry! Below is an excerpt from Episode 5: "Someone Had to Pay." The full podcast is available on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, through the Book of Basketball 2.0 feed. Both defendants were acquitted of charges they attempted to kill two men who were with Bias when he was shot, and Eiland was acquited of first-degree murder. The suspect asked Mr. You may not upload any more photos to this memorial, This photo was not uploaded because this memorial already has 20 photos, This photo was not uploaded because you have already uploaded 5 photos to this memorial, This photo was not uploaded because this memorial already has 30 photos, This photo was not uploaded because you have already uploaded 15 photos to this memorial. In an era when athletes were growing accustomed to a culture of permissiveness, Driesell had simply lost his way and "started recruiting a different kind of kid," according to Denlinger. That's what he kept saying. ", Game of Kings: A Year Among the Oddballs and Geniuses Who Make Up America's Top High School Chess Team. 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