After Without Bias…

This is the picture that is etched in my memory. There’s something about the look. There’s something bigger in that smile. It seems to say so many things – to speak such volumes about Len Bias. It has a little of his swagger. It has a little of his appreciation. It hints at the promise. It encapsulates the joy of what he’d accomplished at that moment. It seemed to give a sense that, right then, he knew so much about what could be, and, at the same time, it belied an innocence that would soon prove he also knew very little.

If you can’t already tell, I just finished watching “Without Bias,” tonight’s feature in ESPN’s 30 for 30 series of documentaries. The story is, of course, not new to me nor to millions of others. I’ve got nothing profound, new or particularly insightful to say about the film, Bias’s story, or what it means or says – about our society, about fame, youth or basketball. I’m going to keep writing anyway. Call it temporary catharsis through blogging, or whatever you feel like. Maybe if you’re a 30-something like me you’ll somehow understand just wanting to talk it out.

I DVR’d tonight’s installment in ESPN’s (damn good) series. I don’t tape shows. There’s nothing I typically care that much about watching. But this is a story stays with you. As a 32-year old who grew up living, breathing and absorbing everything sports, it is an indelible memories. If you’re around my age, this story is part of you, part of your history. His is a name that is unforgettable for so many of the wrong reasons. Len Bias.

My wife (who’s 31) had never heard of him. I thought she was joking when she repsonded thusly earlier this evening. So, I started telling the familiar story completely anticipating it would hit her like a ton of bricks. It didn’t. I’m still baffled. Len Bias’s tales, as I expressed with what she surely perceived to be a disproportionate degree of seriousness, is a part of our Gen X/Y DNA (or so I thought). It is as much a “sports story” as a cultural and historical one.

That is, of course, what makes it so significant. If that’s even the right word… unforgettable? painful? tragic? A single moment that left a permanent imprint on sport, on society, on goverment, on our culture. As Bill Simmons once wrote, Len Bias became the permanent anti-drug ad. The notion (based on the myth around Bias’s use or reality) that using cocaine once could kill you spooked kids across America who may have known nothing of drugs prior to his death. This person’s death would resonate in such a way with so many that people (including those included in tonight’s showing) compared the event (and the association it carried with a segment of a population and an era), to the the assination of JFK.

Watching “Without Bias,” the shadow cast by Len Bias’s death, and all that came along with it, has not faded. Tonight only served to remind me of the just how much promise existed, of just how good Len Bias was and might have been. The piece did what the story still does to so many of us. It made me sad, reflective and remiscent. It made me feel a bit older. And, in some ways, it made me angry. Angry at him. Angry at his teammates. Angry at the senselessness, as well as the sense of deification often bestowed upon him – naivety (depending on whom you believe) or any other reasons or rationale for his actions withstanding.

But that’s not to be debated here. The film took the appropriate road that neither overly glorified nor completely dismissed the realities of Bias’s story. It also reminded me of the tragedy of Jay Bias, and the pain this family has endured. As is usually the case, recalling Len Bias is always about what the greatest of highs, and mountains of potential, and the speed and startling circumstances in which it so dramatically disappeard. It is a modern American tragedy in all of the figurative and literal meanings of the played out expression. Strangely, summing it up I come around to a quote from a film about an Italian kid growing up in the Bronx:

The saddest thing in life is wasted talent, and the choices you make will shape your life forever.

Hopefully, the lessons from Len Bias’s death live on and prevent more talent from unnecessarily wasting away.