LEN BIAS' LEGACY 20 YEARS LATER

It was 20 years ago Monday that the cocaine-induced death of
basketball wunderkind Len Bias rocked a great many worlds, not the
least of which was his mother's. Dr. Lonise Bias has been on the
stump ever since, throwing her considerable energy and eloquence at
an even more considerable societal ill.

She's not in it merely for the cathartic benefits.

"I believe that Len died so that others could live," Dr. Bias said
during a conference call with reporters last month. "I believe that
he was a seed that went down to bring forth life to save others."

The anecdotal evidence suggests a success story of sorts. Dr. Bias, a
motivational speaker, trainer and consultant, said she has been
approached by "numbers" of people over the past two decades who tell
her "that the day Len Bias died, they stopped using cocaine."

Government statistics aren't nearly as satisfying. According to Scott
Burns, deputy director for state and local affairs at the White House
office of national drug control policy, drug use among adolescents
decreased from the day of Len Bias' death until the early 1990s. It
has spiked in the years since.

So while drug use among kids is down since 1985, it is up since 1991.
Marijuana is the mind-altering flavor of the month, accounting for
more than half the teens currently being treated for drug dependence,
according to Burns.

Thus, there is a job still to be done. And here an historical reset
might be in order given that Len Bias, too young to die 20 years ago,
would likely be too old to play NBA ball today had he lived. Which is
to say, there is an entire generation that isn't versed on the
profound nature of his tragedy.

Here's the deal: Len Bias was a 6-foot-8 package of basketball gifts.
He could jump off the planet. He could shoot with a loving touch. He
averaged 23.2 points and seven rebounds at the University of
Maryland. He was the second pick in the 1986 NBA draft, going to the
defending champion Boston Celtics.

"I don't have a ring yet," he said after being drafted. "But I'd be
pleased to wear one."

That was on a Tuesday night. Early Thursday morning, Bias went into
convulsions in his dorm room, the result of cocaine intoxication. He
was pronounced dead before noon.

His death came at a time when the sports world was still buzzing in
the wake of baseball's Pittsburgh drug trials, when recreational
cocaine use was a full-on epidemic. Only there was nothing
recreational about the death of someone so young and so promising as
Len Bias. The news was devastating.

"That's the cruelest thing I ever heard," said Celtics forward Larry
Bird, who would have been Bias' teammate.

It left Bias' mother with the impossible task of making sense of the senseless.

"When Len first died," she recalled, "someone said, 'Take lemons and
make lemonade.' And that disturbed me, because it was one of the most
painful things that I had ever experienced. And I'm trying to figure
out how someone can say, 'Take lemons and make lemonade.'"

The one thing she understood was that she couldn't stay where she
was. She had to pick a direction and move forward. She chose to
strike out against what had killed her "pride and joy."

And so she has traveled the world trying to arm society, and
society's parents, with the tools that might have helped her 20 years
ago. She owns Bias Lecturing and Consulting Inc. Her clients include
the Drug Enforcement Agency, IBM Corporation, NBA, NFL, NCAA and
Major League Baseball.

She has made inroads -- perhaps more personally than culturally. "One
of the hardest things you can be faced with in life is to bury a
child," she said. "It's so painful because the natural order is
reversed; instead of the child burying the parent, the parent is
burying the child."

So it is reasonable to suggest that her work has brought her some
personal comfort. And while the numbers indicate that a problem still
exists, it also is reasonable to suggest that those numbers might
indicate a much bigger problem if she hadn't decided to fight the good fight.

Her message is simple. Parents are the greatest antidote to drug use;
they possess the necessary tools -- time, interest, love -- to combat
its insidious effects.

"We have to buy into the idea that we are the medication that our
children need," she said.

Two decades after Len's death, Dr. Lonise Bias can watch and enjoy
basketball. She has taken her grandchildren to the Maryland campus to
see the mural of their uncle in the new arena there.

"If I had stayed back in 1986, placing blame and pointing fingers, I
would not be where I am today," she said. "I would be in a mental
hospital somewhere on prescription drugs, or standing at Len's grave
crying, saying 'Woe is me.'

"I have a vibrant life. I have a wonderful family. I have moved on.
It was very difficult for me. But 20 years later, I have lemonade."