Michael Leonard Bias

Blood Legacy?

Michael Leonard Bias was born in the summer of 1986, some two weeks after Len Bias died. A DNA test has never been done, and the Bias family has not responded to requests for interviews. But Derrick Curry, a friend of the Bias family and a teammate of Jay Bias at Northwestern High School, says someone close to the family told him about five years ago that they know Len has a son.

Michael Leonard Bias potentially represents the most intimate element of the mixed legacy of Len Bias, a connection that extends beyond a similar bloodline and shared genes. The life of Michael Bias, like that of Len Bias, has been greatly affected by drugs, which have contributed to Michael Bias accumulating a lengthy criminal record and living a misdirected life. He spoke calmly as he sat in a chair on the secured side of the visitors area at the Anne Arundel County Detention Center during a conversation in July 2011. Through a window, his face looked eager as he talked about Len Bias as his father. Michael made it clear that the most important thing he wants from the Bias family is recognition.

He has spent much of his adulthood so far incarcerated for crimes that range from driving without a license in 2004 to an incident in February 2008 when he was charged with armed robbery and reckless endangerment. He was sentenced to probation on the condition that he enter therapy. Michael says that he wants to try to enter a therapy program for the second time. “Everything has been a struggle, financially, emotionally,” he says. “It’s been a tough break for me all my life. It’s been a jinx from when I was born because he died.”

Excerpted from the book, Born Ready: the Mixed Legacy of Len Bias

Learn about the Born Ready Project that teaches life skills, using Len’s legacy as a teaching tool.

Johnnie Walker

A Mentor Mourns, and Wonders

After Bias died, his mentor Johnnie Walker, who taught Bias how to play at a young age, could not bring himself to return to The Rec, where he was still volunteering, and work with the players. “It kept me away from a lot of things,” he says. “I didn’t go to The Rec for a long time after that.”

The death of Bias affected how Walker’s coworkers perceived him as a police officer. Many of his fellow officers knew Bias, having seen him play basketball with Walker at the police-academy courts, and wondered how Walker could be unaware that Bias used drugs since Bias was spending a lot of time with Brian Tribble, whose activities were already suspicious. “It seemed like maybe people looked at me as if I should have known more than what I knew,” says Walker. “People who knew me said ‘How didn’t you know, because you usually don’t miss anything?’ People were like ‘How do you know he wasn’t using drugs? He was with a drug dealer. You didn’t know [Tribble] was a drug dealer? You didn’t know he was using drugs?’ It created a problem for me. People perceived me different after that for a very long time.”

Prosecutors in Prince George’s County investigating the death of Bias wanted to know why Walker had removed items from Bias’s dorm room the day Bias died. Walker testified before a grand jury, but no charges were brought against him. He says he took Bias’s personal belongings from the room only after receiving permission from police to do so and because the Bias family had asked him to remove the items. He placed the items in the van of Bias’s high school coach, Bob Wagner. “Once the police said everything could be taken out, I cleaned the whole room out,” he says.

Most often Walker has been left to wonder why Bias would fall prey to the temptations of drug abuse. “I think the drug thing with Leonard to this day was his perception that no matter what he did, he was just better and stronger, and it wouldn’t have that effect on him,” Walker says. Walker became the girls’ varsity head coach at Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C. in 1996. In 2001, he left the D.C. police force and took a job as a registrar for the city’s public schools. He moved to Dunbar High School in D.C. as its attendance counselor in 2006, the same year he became the head coach for the boys’ basketball team at the school. In the summer of 2010, Walker was named the athletic director at Dunbar. He still wonders what more he could have done to prevent his friend’s death. “It may not be true, but I felt like even when I was around his mom and dad, that they blamed me, that I should have protected him better,” he says, his voice quiet and his tear-filled eyes staring at a television showing sports. “I felt for a long time like it was my fault. Still feel that way.”

Excerpted from the book, Born Ready: the Mixed Legacy of Len Bias

Learn about the Born Ready Project that teaches life skills, using Len’s legacy as a teaching tool.

Brian Waller

A Best Friend Sadly Remembers

Brian Waller grew up with Len Bias in Columbia Park and to two were teammates on the Northwestern High School basketball team. Waller, a year older than Bias, had talked with Bias on Sunday and again on Monday, the day before the draft. Bias hadn’t said he would stop by that night, but Waller and Walker still held out hope that he would surprise them. They were so excited about Bias being selected by the Celtics that they cut their game short and talked most of the night about his good fortune. “We were just hanging out talking and waiting for him to walk through the door,” says Waller. “Every time the door opened, we looked to see who was gonna walk through, thinking and hoping it was him.” Bias’s buoyant presence never materialized. Waller was left to wonder: Could he have saved his best friend’s life if only Bias had walked through those doors at The Rec that night? “I can remember, long after he passed away, I would come home from work, I would sit in the basement in the dark, for a couple of months,” he says. “No TV, no radio. If I was there, he’d still be here.” Waller says Bias never used cocaine around him.

Waller’s eyes widened and filled with tears when he talked about Bias. “It was probably more sadness, not really guilt,” he says, staring into space. “Man, if I was there, I could have done something. I don’t think he would have been comfortable …” Waller pauses and takes a deep breath, “doing any kind of drugs around me. I would have been, ‘What are you doing?’ I would have been totally against it. He probably wouldn’t have brought that foolishness around me.”

Excerpted from the book, Born Ready: the Mixed Legacy of Len Bias

Learn about the Born Ready Project that teaches life skills, using Len’s legacy as a teaching tool.

Walt Williams

A Dynasty Crumbles

Bias was the reason Walt Williams, a Washington, D.C., native who grew up watching Bias play, enrolled at Maryland two years after the star died. Williams, who helped keep Maryland basketball viable during the down years following Bias’s death, confirmed Driesell’s theory. “I was a very big Len Bias fan,” says the man who would break Bias’s Maryland single-season scoring record and is now a broadcaster on Maryland’s basketball games. “It was a big thing for me to go to Maryland and follow in his footsteps. That was a part of me staying at Maryland.  Maryland had gone through so many things with [the death of] Bias. People forget all the good he did. He made me feel like I can do well in basketball because I saw him do it.”

Excerpted from the book, Born Ready: the Mixed Legacy of Len Bias

Learn about the Born Ready Project that teaches life skills, using Len’s legacy as a teaching tool.

Keith Booth

A Reminder to Stay Focused

In April 2011, Booth talked excitedly about the day he met Bias, his hero. It happened during a promotional appearance by Bias and teammate Keith Gatlin at a sandwich shop in East Baltimore. Booth, an impressionable 10-year-old, arrived three hours early to secure a spot at the front of the line for the 11 a.m. event. When he met Bias, he told him that he would play hard and one day be a Terrapin just like his idol, and, yup, that he would at least tie Bias’s scoring record. Booth knew the owner of the sub shop and was given close access to Bias and Gatlin once the signing ended. He says the moment is recorded in a picture of Booth with Bias and Gatlin and several others, which hung on a wall in the shop for almost a decade.

When his older sister woke him on the morning of June 19, 1986, after hearing on the news that Bias had died, Booth grew hysterical. He cried uncontrollably as he called his mother at work to tell her the tragic news. Booth was 11 years old. He saw the kinds of people where he grew up in his East Baltimore neighborhood who used drugs. They weren’t like Bias. Before Bias died, the thought never crossed the boy’s mind that elite athletes used drugs. He used Bias’s death as a reminder to stay focused on basketball and his grades, and to continue a lifestyle that avoided drug use. “Once I understood what it was and how it happened that he died, it made me never want to touch a drug ever or abuse my body,” he says. “It affected my life to help me become the person and man I am today.”

Excerpted from the book, Born Ready: the Mixed Legacy of Len Bias

Learn about the Born Ready Project that teaches life skills, using Len’s legacy as a teaching tool.

The Great Traffic Light

“Leonard Saved My Life”

Lefty Driesell, Len Bias’ coach at Maryland, finds solace in Len’s legacy when he tells the following story. During the early summer of 2010, a man approached Driesell as they walked out of church near Driesell’s home in Virginia Beach. “Someone said, ‘Aren’t you Lefty Driesell? I was always a big Maryland fan, and Leonard was one of my favorite players,’ ” says Driesell.

The man explained that shortly before Bias’s death, he had reached a personal low, losing his job and his family due to a cocaine addiction. When friends told the man that Bias had died, he immediately stopped abusing cocaine. Says Driesell: “He said Leonard saved his life.”

Who knows how many lives have been saved, and how many more will be for decades to come? Brian Straus had no connection to Bias other than growing up in the Washington area and watching him play on TV and was not a rabid fan of either the Terrapins or the Celtics. He was raised in white upper-middle-class suburbia. But when I told Straus, a longtime friend and an accomplished soccer journalist, that I was writing a book about the legacy of Bias, his immediate reaction surprised me.

“He was the reason I never used cocaine,” Straus says. “He was exactly the reason when I was at parties in college at [the University of Pennsylvania] and saw people do cocaine and I didn’t try it. He was the great traffic light, the devil on your shoulder saying don’t do it. It wasn’t an essay question. It was just like a punch in the gut that told you don’t touch this ever.”

Excerpted from the book, Born Ready: the Mixed Legacy of Len Bias

Learn about the Born Ready Project that teaches life skills, using Len’s legacy as a teaching tool.

Find out about the Born Ready Hoops Festival  Nov. 22-24, that will honor Len’s legacy as a basketball player.

50 for 50 – Len Bias’ Golden Moments #44…High School Coach Bob Wagner

Through Nov. 18, Len Bias’ 50th birthday, the Born Ready Blog will provide each day a new item that helped define Len’s legacy, 50 in total.

Part of him died when Len died.

For a year and a half after Len Bias died, Bob Wagner fought a deep depression. He stopped coaching and teaching and returned to school, taking computer-technician classes. In the evenings, he worked as a night manager at College Park Towers, an apartment complex that catered to students who attended his alma mater, the University of Maryland. “That’s where I disappeared,” says Wagner, Bias’s head coach at Northwestern High School. When not at work or in school, Wagner retreated to his house in Hyattsville as much as possible. “I wanted to get away from [high-school] kids,” he says. “I didn’t want anything to do with basketball. I didn’t answer the phone. I didn’t have much of a life at all. I was sleeping, studying and working. … There wasn’t anything I could do.”

Wagner says he still thinks about Bias every day. Sometimes, he cries. After Bias died, he endured typical stages that accompany a loss. “Depression. I questioned myself, what did I not see, what really transpired,” he says. “Not knowing any of that side of him partying. In those days, I was the big brother to all the kids. We had a unifying spirit around basketball. It gave us a positive identity within the community. That’s what hurt a lot of people with the tragedy. Here was a P.G. County public-school kid who did just as much if not more than a kid that might have gone to DeMatha or St. John’s or some other top D.C.-area program. He wasn’t given anything along the way. He had to work for what he got. It hurt the whole community. He was part of us. Most of us were part of him. So when he died, part of us died with him. The pain of his loss and the death of hope. He represented hope for a lot of kids.”

Excerpted from the book, Born Ready: the Mixed Legacy of Len Bias

Learn about the Born Ready Project that teaches life skills, using Len’s legacy as a teaching tool.

Find out about the Born Ready Hoops Festival  Nov. 22-24, that will honor Len’s legacy as a basketball player.

Bob Wade

The Wade Experiment Fades

Bob Wade’s legacy at Maryland as its basketball coach for three years, following the death of Bias, is mixed. His NCAA violations will be remembered for setting back the basketball program for years. Wade called the group of men’s basketball coaches in the conference an “old boy’s network” in a Charlotte Observer report and added that his time in the ACC was difficult. But as the first black head coach of a men’s basketball team in the conference he can be considered a cultural pioneer, despite appearing uncomfortable in that role.

Even Robert Slaughter, who hired Wade, ultimately questioned the wisdom of the move. “In retrospect, it might have been an impossible situation for Bob,” he told the Washington Post in January 1990. “Bob followed a coaching legend. He was black. He was appointed by a black chancellor. He’s from a high school. He’s hired one day before practice begins. And the players had gone through hell after Leonard’s death. Throwing Bob in the middle of that was like throwing a piece of raw meat to a pack of lions. You’re going to get chewed up if you don’t do things perfectly. I don’t think Bob got the support he needed from many people. There were people within the athletic department as well as outside the department who did not want him to succeed.”

Bob Wade’s legacy as a beloved high-school basketball coach, however, continues to grow. In 2008 some of Wade’s former players at Dunbar honored the coach at a roast in Greenbelt, Maryland, a town about five miles from College Park. Those attending included former NBA player Muggsy Bogues and former Maryland star Graham. As of the fall of 2011 Wade worked as the athletic director with Baltimore City Public Schools. “He loved all of us,” Graham said in a Baltimore Sun report promoting the event. “He cared about us. He made a difference in the lives of a lot of young men in more ways than just coaching basketball.”

Excerpted from the book, Born Ready: the Mixed Legacy of Len Bias

Learn about the Born Ready Project that teaches life skills, using Len’s legacy as a teaching tool.

Congressional Misstep

Congress Passes the Anti-Drug Abuse Act

The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, passed in direct response to the death of Len Bias, reestablished mandatory minimum sentences for first-time drug offenders that had been removed from federal law in 1970. It stated that a person manufacturing or distributing at least 500 grams of powder cocaine faced a five-year mandatory minimum sentence, with a maximum 40 years, and those manufacturing or distributing at least 5,000 grams of powder cocaine received a 10-year minimum sentence, with a maximum of life imprisonment. A person manufacturing or distributing at least 5 grams of crack cocaine received the five-year mandatory minimum while those manufacturing or distributing at least 50 grams of that form of the drug received the minimum 10-year sentence. For sentences longer than the minimum, there was no hope of parole; it had been abolished in the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. By comparison, someone would have to possess 100 grams of heroin or 100 kilos of marijuana to receive the same five-year sentence with no parole as someone found with 5 grams of crack cocaine.

The 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act applied the mandatory sentences of the 1986 act to anyone who was a member of a drug-trafficking conspiracy. Under the law, if a defendant worked as a doorman to a crack house but never sold, used or purchased the drug, he was liable for all the crack sold during the time the group operated the crack house, even before and after he worked as a doorman. Within six years of passage of the conspiracy amendment in 1988, the number of drug cases in federal prisons increased by 300 percent. From 1986 to 1998, that number increased 450 percent.

Eric E. Sterling, a federal sentencing reform advocate, from 1979 to 1989 was counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, and was also a principal aide in developing the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 and the Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988. In 1989 he switched roles from federal policy wonk to consumer advocate when he became president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, a private, nonprofit group that promotes education about criminal justice problems.

He admits now that passing the anti-drug bills was a mistake. “The legacy of this legislation should be whether or not it has succeeded in making the United States a safer, healthier place for its citizens,” says Sterling, who has become an advocate for sentencing reform. “From my perspective, it has not. It failed. I did not think at that time that mandatory sentencing was a good idea. But the members of Congress and the Judiciary committee were my clients and that was my assignment. I had certain kinds of concerns and reservations about that kind of approach. This weighs on me a great deal.”

Excerpted from the book, Born Ready: the Mixed Legacy of Len Bias

Learn about the Born Ready Project that teaches life skills, using Len’s legacy as a teaching tool.

Changes in Terps Athletics

Maryland Athletics Restructures

By the early 1990s, that culture was one of discomfort and uncertainty. A big reason was perhaps the most significant move made by Perkins, toward the end of his three years at Maryland. On May 16, 1990, he announced that varsity teams would be restructured into four tiers. That day, he also said the school would eliminate athletic scholarships in eight of its 23 varsity sports and would reduce scholarship money by 70 percent in five others. Perkins said a budget crisis made worse by NCAA sanctions against the men’s basketball team prompted the moves.

Six sports – football, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s lacrosse, women’s volleyball and women’s field hockey – were placed in the first tier. Those sports, which had a history of competing for NCAA national honors, received $1.5 million of the $1.871 million available for scholarships. In the second tier, four sports – women’s lacrosse, men’s wrestling, and men’s and women’s soccer – each received $64,000 in scholarship money, representing a 15% cut in aid. These sports were expected to contend for ACC championships.

Third-tier sports would have their scholarship aid reduced by 70 percent: baseball, men’s and women’s swimming, and men’s and women’s cross-country would each receive $25,000 in scholarship money and compete regionally. Men’s and women’s indoor and outdoor track, men’s golf, women’s gymnastics, and men’s and women’s tennis were placed in the lowest level and would operate without scholarships. They would compete locally except for ACC competitions.

Excerpted from the book, Born Ready: the Mixed Legacy of Len Bias

Learn about the Born Ready Project that teaches life skills, using Len’s legacy as a teaching tool.