Thirty-two years ago. June 17, 1986. Never was there a sunnier time in Boston Celtics history. The confluence of events made it so.

The club’s 16th championship had been won nine days earlier, and while the basketball world was writing paeans to what many were considering the greatest collection in hoop history, things got even better on June 17.

The Celtics drafted Len Bias.

Through foresight and good fortune, they had traded Gerald Henderson to Seattle two years earlier for a first-round pick and so Danny Ainge could play more.

Back then the non-playoff teams each had an equal chance at the top pick, so seven envelopes containing team logos were plucked from a bin. The Celtics got the second pick. Cleveland, which had received the No. 1 pick in a trade with Philadelphia – which had gotten the pick in a trade with the Clippers (for Kobe’s dad, Joe Bryant, no less) – took Brad Daugherty.

The Celts got the player they coveted most, Bias, and there seemed no end to the glory days. As the ’80s Celtics-Lakers rivalry moved deeper into the second half of the decade, this was a body shot to Pat Riley, Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

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Bias, his dad and one of his agents, as well as Steve Riley from the Celtics’ front office and I, left Felt Forum at Madison Square Garden, piled into cabs and took the Eastern Shuttle to Boston for the press conference later that hot afternoon. It seemed that life could be no better for both the player and the franchise. Coming across the media credential from that day I am reminded again – as if there was a chance I could ever forget.

The events of that time were seared into memory two days later. Len Bias was dead. Cocaine intoxication, according to the medical examiner.

“I was heading to play golf at Charles River Country Club,” Kevin McHale said Friday. “I was driving down (Route) 128 listening to a rock station with one of those morning shows, and they came on and said Len Bias had died. I was like, no way. You can’t make jokes about something like that. Then I changed stations and heard the same thing.”

McHale never teed it up that day.

“I couldn’t play,” he said. “I drove down to the Celtics’ offices next to the old Garden to see Red (Auerbach). Everyone was stunned.

“At that point, we still thought it was a heart attack or something. But Red was really well connected down there, living in D.C. and all, and I was in his office when he got the call that (Bias) had died from drugs. They told Red they wanted him to know before it started getting reported.

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“I really think that whole situation took a lot out of Red. He lost something that day. He was happy to be able to draft a guy as good as Len Bias, but he seemed just as happy that Bias was a D.C. area guy. He’d worked Red’s camp so there was already a tie there.”

The basketball loss to the Celtics was and is perhaps immeasurable, but it’s, of course, nothing compared to that of the Bias family. And that fact was recognized right away.

“The basketball side of it didn’t come up, not for a long while,” said Jan Volk, the general manager at the time. “I remember calling our owners that morning and their only concern was what we could do to help. That was when Len was still in the hospital and all we knew was that it was critical and then after he passed, too.

“One of the things you find out when you’re in the middle of a crisis is that you don’t have a good perspective on much of what’s going on. You steel yourself to all the horror and try to just muddle through it, and that’s what we did.”

In some ways, Volk is still in that mode. Thirty-two years have worn down some of the edges but the memories are still vivid.

“I don’t do what you’re doing today, which is recalling the precise milestones,” he said. “I was unaware the anniversary of the draft was the 17th. I’ve gone past that. I’ve gone past, ‘Could we have done anything different? Is there something we missed? Is there anything we could have done to prevent this?’ I’ve been through that over and over, and the answer is no. But it’s still there, and it’s still really hard when you think about it.”

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In the relatively meaningless realm that is the game, Volk – and no doubt fans from that era – still wonder how the Celtics’ course may have been different. The 17th championship did not follow until 2008.

“Of course I’ve thought about it,” said Volk. “You’d have to be totally oblivious and non-competitive to not recognize the loss. People still ask me whether we would have won in ’87 if Len Bias hadn’t died. And just being realistic about it, I think we would have. We were one player short and he was a very good player. We won 59 games with an injury-depleted team that could have used a young player with talent.”

The Celtics went to Game 6 of the finals before losing to the Lakers. McHale played on a broken foot, Larry Bird dealt with various ailments and Bill Walton was out most of the season.

Bird played 40.6 minutes a game in the regular season and 44.1 in the playoffs.

“I think (Bias) would have been great for us that year and definitely beyond that,” said McHale. “What he would have given us with energy and athleticism and talent would have been a great fit.

“At that point, Larry and I hadn’t been beaten up too much, at least before my foot. Bias would have been a great piece to what we had and where we were going, and eventually in a few years he could be the best player on the team.”

Except, no. Len Bias partied with cocaine, and Len Bias died.

Thirty-two years later, I understand this to be the truth but it remains hard to fathom. That’s part of the reason to bring it up again on these pages. More, however, it’s the hope that someone young will read this and realize that some mistakes are fatal, or that some parent will pick up this paper or click on the story and have a conversation with his or her child.

The blue and white credential from the 1986 NBA draft is clipped to other media tags that, for no rhyme or reason, just seemed to collect themselves over the corner of a cabinet door in the kitchen. Some have suggested it’s better to send this one out with the trash or at least put it in a drawer away from sight. But it stays to mourn a loss – and as a reminder to respect our fragile nature, and accept the lessons of those who either didn’t or couldn’t.


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