Len Bias

Every year on this day I think about Len Bias, my sadness twofold as I think about one of the(the?) greatest players I ever saw in the middle of the ACC Golden Era as well as what the Celtics missed out on when he died two days after they drafted him. Prolly the greatest "what if?" in basketball history. I've waxed crybaby here before about those ACC days, you know this. And his death is somehow my own JFK moment - I can still feel myself lolling on my bed that summer day, facing the wall on my left and reading "Ball Four" when the announcement came on the radio. No, he was no JFK, but JFK was no Frosty either.

Anyways, I guess I never really knew how much his death affected drug enforcement; it turns out with the 1986 midterm elections coming on the heels of his death every politico wanted to go on record as being a hard-ass on drug enforcement, and our War on Drugs really cranked up and the number of inmates imprisoned because of drugs went from 36,000 to 159,000 in a matter of years. Of course mostly young black men. I can't believe this is really a good thing, unless you think constantly sending men to prison over and over has won the war on drugs. The Archduke Ferdinand of the Drug War, they call him now. Jesus.