On this day in 1986, Len Bias, the Boston Celtics’ selection with the No. 2 pick of the 1986 NBA draft, died just two days after his selection by the team. Bias, a highly-rated 6-foot-8 small forward out of the University of Maryland, returned home from the June 17 draft in New York City and went to a party at his alma mater.
He and several friends used cocaine for several hours, triggering a fatal arrhythmia. The loss devastated the family, friends, Celtics, and the wider basketball world. It was a major catalyst of a two-decade decline for the Celtics.
They did not win another championship after Bias’ death until 2008.
It is also the date of the 1984 NBA draft, in which the Celtics took two players of note. The first was Michael Young, a 6-foot-7 small forward drafted out of the University of Houston.
He never played for the Celtics but managed to carve out a career for himself overseas, with short stints playing for the Phoenix Suns and Philadelphia 76ers before landing a deal with the Los Angeles Clippers in 1989-90, his last in the NBA.
The Celtics also drafted a 6-foot-5 shooting guard out of Virginia by the name of Rick Carlisle. Fans today typically know him as a recent head coach of the Dallas Mavericks, but he played five seasons in the NBA as a player, three of which with Boston.
He won a championship with the team in 1986 (and made a bit of an awkward cameo in Michael Jordan’s “Last Dance” documentary) while averaging 2.2 points and 1.1 assists per game with the Celtics.
Boston also hired, on this date, M.L. Carr as head coach, a job he held for two seasons with a team he also played for in the 1980s.
Carr’s tenure as head coach for the team (1995-97) was the effective low point in Celtics history. The 1996-97 season produced the worst win total in Celtics history with just 15 wins.
Carr resigned at the end of that season, leaving with a 48-116 coaching record, the worst winning percentage (.293) in franchise history.
Finally, it is also the day in 2017 that then-team president Danny Ainge traded the top pick for the No. 3 pick owned by the Philadelphia 76ers, which the club used to draft Jayson Tatum three days later.
The deal netted Boston another first-round pick that was used on Romeo Langford for the trouble of taking the player Ainge would have selected first anyway.
Listen to the “Celtics Lab” podcast on:
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3zBKQY6
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3GfUPFi
YouTube: https://bit.ly/3F9DvjQ
