The first thing that hits me is how easy we forget. The start of the film, showing Len going against great competition still blows me away. What a talent. The ultimate inside outside player title probably does not do him justice. Just to make sure I wasn't reminiscing too much I even played the film to my son, who has played with many of the pros in the NBA. He was blown away as well. The one clip that stands out in the many is the one where he is about a foot above Michael Jordan on a 12 foot jump shot in a close game. Perfect elbow alignment, perfect arch and a poetry release. Oh yeah, ultra athletic as well. Could do it all.
What I also think about on the dawn of the 2010 NCAA tournament is how much the landscape has changed in college basketball since Len Bias graced the hardwood. Bias was not heavily recruited and developed under the college program for 3 years. This rarely happens in the modern day. Every year we have to put our hands around the college game because the elite freshmen bolt for the pros after one year. They do not even want to go to college. In the Bias era, a player could not go hardship until after his junior year. This process tended to weed out alot of the mistakes and built a better player in terms of fundamentals. In the Bias days you had a continuity to the program and some continuity with the star players. Now you really have to follow college basketball to know who is who. As a result, we have a sport that really is not relevant in the regular season unless you are rooting for a uniform. It only really matters in March. Now the players get the form that Len Bias had coming out of college after serving an apprenticeship in the pros. I am not going to deny a teenager the earning power that they get in tennis and other sports, but there is something to be said for playing under a Dean Smith or a Lefty Driesell for 3 or 4 years.
A couple of other mind blowers on this were the number of celebrities from every angle of life that were involved in the film. Politicians, Jesse Jackson, sports celebrities like Red Auerbach,
local leaders like Marion Berry...almost the entire Boston sporting press were in the story. The sheer mass of people attending the various memorial services will blow you away...it's as if a statesman died. Again, how easy we forget.
The time period also had some significance from a standpoint that this was right at the time period that crack cocaine posed a horrendous problem for many urban areas, particularly Washington, D.C.
Lastly, if you are a parent, you can especially appreciate the composure of Len Bias' parents. The way they have carry themselves has to be seen. Remember, they lost another son only a couple years later. Again, I don't want to ruin the film for you, but I strongly urge you to see Without Bias.
