| I'm referring to the Boston Celtics, my home-town basketball team. This page shows the team history, decade by decade. |
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The team and the fans
The social contract
Every sports team depends on loyal fans to support it, and the Boston Celtics are no exception. Teams pay millions of dollars to each of their players. Some of the players receive tens of millions of dollars.Money doesn't grow on trees. Every team has to ask their fans to support the team by offering them good entertainment in exchange for the money that fans pay to watch the team live in a building like the Boston Garden, now rebuilt and renamed. Fans who watch a game live also support the team when they buy food and drinks during a game. This money goes to the food vendors, who pay a fee to sell the food and drink inside the team-owned building.
Even fans who don't watch a game live can support a team through their cable-TV or satellite-TV fees, through the sales of team merchandise, and through advertising on radio broadcasts, printed newspapers, and sports blogs. None of them would have much of an audience if the team wasn't popular with their fans, which leads to the real problem.
The Boston Celtics aren't popular with the fans.
Past Celtics glory
The team isn't losing games year after year because the Celtics have poor-quality athletes on the team. They can't be compared to the New York Mets baseball team, which went many years without any winning seasons.
The Championship team photo, 1981
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They were the champions of the National Basketball Association in 1981. Please notice the curly-haired kid sitting second from the right in the front row. His name is Larry Bird. |
Larry is one of the reasons why the Boston Celtics won three championships in the early 1980s.
Watch some of his highlights in this video. |
I still remember hearing a radio broadcast one day when Larry was a member of the team. As reported by the sports reporter for that radio station, at the very beginning of a practice session for the team, the coach told Larry to go to the center of the basketball court with a basketball. When he got there, the coach said to Larry that if he could make a basket on his first try, the whole team would be able to skip that practice session.
Larry made the basket, and the coach kept his word. He sent the team home for the day, and the whole team got a big boost in their confidence level.
These are two other reasons why the Boston Celtics won three championships in the early 1980s.
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The team is losing games because they don't have an enthusiastic fan base.
There is a specific reason for this. The Boston Celtics have a bad reputation.
The source of their image problem
| The thrill of victory ... In the 1986 draft, they liked and wanted to select a man named Len Bias. He was an exceptionally good player. Look at him participating in this dunking contest. |
Look at his basketball highlights as a college player.
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... and then, the Celtics made the biggest mistake in their history ...
These paragraphs were copied from an August 5, 2004 story on the E.S.P.N. website.NBA commissioner David Stern is handed a piece of paper and walks to the podium. He unfolds the paper. "With the No. 2 pick in the NBA Draft," he says, "the Boston Celtics select Len Bias, University of Maryland."
Bias, the ACC Player of the Year who averaged a league-leading 23 points and seven rebounds during his senior season, grins shyly as he rises from his seat and walks proudly across the Forum and onto the stage. He is cool and confident, not displaying his excitement outwardly. For he knew he was going to Boston, that he was going to be a Celtic. He had become close to Celtics president Red Auerbach, a friend of Bias' coach at Maryland, Lefty Driesell. Bias had even spent a week the previous summer at Auerbach's New England basketball camp, working with young players.
... the agony of defeat
Unfortunately, Len Bias had a problem. Unlike Larry Bird, Dave Cowens, and John Havlicek, he wasn't a professional off the court.Soon after Len Bias was drafted by the Celtics, even before he played in his first game as a Celtic, he died of a cocaine overdose.
These paragraphs were copied from the same E.S.P.N. story: The photo was found with an image search.
As Bias walks out of Madison Square Garden, the glare of bright sun forcing him to squint, he heads toward a taxi on 33rd Street and 8th Avenue with his father, James, his agent, Bill Shelton, and Steve Riley from the Celtics' front office. Children on the sidewalk ask Bias for his autograph. "The Celtics still aren't going to beat the Knicks," one of the children says with a smile. Bias is amused. "We'll see," he says, smiling.
He gets into a taxi and heads off to La Guardia Airport and an Eastern Shuttle flight to Boston to meet the media and visit Reebok's corporate offices, where he is discussing a five-year endorsement package worth $1.6 million.
Later in the day, tired, weary and excited to return home, Bias and his father board an evening flight and land at Washington's National Airport at 10 p.m. They drive to the family home in Landover. At 11:30 p.m., Bias leaves and heads to his dorm suite in College Park on the University of Maryland campus dorm room that he shares with teammates Jeff Baxter, Keith Gatlin, David Gregg, Phil Nevin and Terry Long, a friend and former Maryland basketball player.
It's midnight, June 19, 1986. Bias arrives at his dorm room in Washington Hall. He is met by various teammates and friends, including basketball players Gatlin, Gregg, Long, Baxter and Keeta Covington, a defensive back on the Maryland football team. They laugh, talk, and munch on crabs in the dormitory suite until 2 a.m. They talk about Bias' future as a Celtic, the spectacular opportunity to play with the greatest and winningest organization in the NBA, the incredible break to play with a legend like Bird, and a championship core of players in McHale, Parish, Ainge and DJ.
But Bias is edgy, frustrated. He becomes sick of talking about himself, his newfound wealth, his fame and the expectations with the great Celtics. He suddenly feels a mountain of pressure. He decides to escape. "I'm getting away from here," he says to the gang. He abruptly leaves the dorm and takes off in his new Nissan 300ZX. "I figured he was going to see a lady," Covington would later say.
Bias speeds toward Cherry Hill, just off the Maryland campus. He stops by a small party and talks to David Driggers, a friend with whom Bias has often played pickup basketball games. Soon, Bias departs. It is 2:30 a.m. At 3 a.m., Bias returns to his campus dorm room. Suddenly, reports will later reveal, cocaine is being passed around the room on a small mirror. For the next three hours, the small group of friends and teammates snort cocaine.
At 6 a.m., while sitting in a chair talking to Long, Bias closes his eyes and begins breathing heavily. His body begins to quiver and shudder. Shockingly, a series of seizures wreak havoc on his 6-foot-8, 210-pound body. "Lenny! Lenny!", Long screams. He doesn't get a response. Bias passes out and slumps back in the chair. Long and Tribble begin screaming.
At 6:32 a.m., a hysterical Tribble dials 911 as Long and Gregg try to revive Bias. The dispatcher answers the 911 call and Tribble screams, "It's Len Bias. He passed out. His body his shaking. You have to get here fast. You have to save him."
The commotion awakens Baxter and Gatlin, who see Bias on the floor, his body convulsing. "I was in a state of shock," Gatlin would say later. "I was so scared."
Long begins to administer CPR. The ambulance arrives at 6:36 a.m. Paramedics find Bias, in a blue Reebok shirt, jeans and sneakers, collapsed in a chair. They try, desperately, to restart his heart, to no avail. As paramedics quickly wheel Bias out of the dorm, roommates and other teammates and friends in the dorm follow. The ambulance speeds off to Leland Memorial Hospital, just a few miles away.
At 6:45, Gatlin calls the Bias home in Landover. Bias' mother answers. "Len had a seizure and they're taking him to the hospital," he says. She drops the phone, races out of the house and heads toward College Hill.
Dr. Edward Wilson, chief emergency room physician at Leland Memorial, injects Bias with drugs designed to help his heart recover from cardiac arrest. Five drugs are administered: sodium epinephrine (a form of adrenaline), sodium bicarbonate (to normalize the acidity in the bloodstream), lidocaine (to control hyperactivity and an irregular heartbeat), calcium (to stimulate the heart muscle) and bretyline (a secondary drug to control irregularity of the heart). It doesn't help. Bias is still unconscious. Electric-shock treatment is then administered. Still no heart beat. A pacemaker is implanted after Bias' heart registers a flat line on the monitor. There's no heart beat. He never begins breathing on his own. He is pronounced dead at 8:50 a.m., due to cardio-respiratory arrest.
Epilogues
These three paragraphs are part of an undated page on the E.S.P.N. website.The Len Bias Morality Play began with a single bizarre phone call, placed from a dormitory on a college campus to a 911 dispatcher whose Baltimorese hammered flat the word "phone" and who, from his tone of voice, apparently assumed this whole thing was a put-on, a prank by a bunch of rowdy university kids with nothing better to do. It was approximately 6:30 in the morning. The voice of the caller was slurred and hesitant, and the voice kept repeating the victim's name until the dispatcher declared, "It doesn't matter what his name is." But Brian Tribble was also (presumably) prodigiously high, and this was really happening to him -- his friend was having a seizure on the floor of his suite, 1103 Washington Hall, on the University of Maryland campus. So Tribble kept repeating the name, and uttering panicky phrases like, "This is Len Bias. You have to get him back to life. There's no way he can die."These are the last sentences of the first paragraph.
A moment earlier, we have since learned, Len Bias sat up on a bed, bent over a mirror, proclaimed himself "a horse" -- a nickname his teammates had used for him because of his on-court grace and physical presence -- and snorted one last line of cocaine. A moment earlier, Bias was fine, just a young man celebrating his future the way many young men have/will celebrate their futures. Then he got up to use the bathroom, and he stumbled, and he sat back down on the bed, and he lapsed into a seizure. There were three other men in the room. One, Terry Long, placed the handle of a pair of scissors in Bias' mouth to prevent him from biting his tongue; another, David Gregg, held Bias' legs. Brian Tribble phoned his mother, who told him to call 911.
The 911 call prompted a dozen more phone calls, the story quickly rippling outward. The paramedics arrived and transported Bias to Leland Memorial Hospital, as Tribble and two of Bias' Maryland teammates, who had been partying with him, began to clean up after themselves. Another teammate, Keith Gatlin, phoned Lonise Bias to tell her Len had had a seizure and was clinging to life; in their haste, she and her husband, James, rushed off to the wrong hospital. Before Bias even arrived at Leland, a source phoned a television reporter named Dave Statter, who did not cover sports but knew Len Bias because everyone in D.C., and especially in Prince George's County, knew Len Bias, because he was a kid who had grown up within walking distance of the Maryland campus, because he had played ball at nearby Northwestern High School. And because hours earlier he had moved close to becoming a millionaire, agreeing to a lucrative endorsement deal with Reebok that he planned to sign the next week, and proclaiming that by being drafted by the Celtics, his dream had been realized.
"But Brian Tribble was also (presumably) prodigiously high, and this was really happening to him -- his friend was having a seizure on the floor of his suite, 1103 Washington Hall, on the University of Maryland campus. So Tribble kept repeating the name, and uttering panicky phrases like, 'This is Len Bias. You have to get him back to life. There's no way he can die.'"
That undated E.S.P.N. page also quotes the opinion of the autopsy report.
LEONARD K. BIAS, a 22-year-old Black male, died as a result of cocaine intoxication, which interrupted the normal electrical control of his heartbeat, resulting in the sudden onset of seizures and cardiac arrest. The blood cocaine level was 6.5 milligrams per liter. Toxicological studies for alcohol and other drugs were negative. Due to the ongoing investigation of the circumstances surrounding his death, the manner of the death is ruled UNDETERMINED at this time.
"There's no way he can die." - Brian Tribble, who was in the room when Len Bias took his last dose of cocaine
Brian was, of course, dead wrong. If you use cocaine, then yes, you can die. Len Bias proved it by putting cocaine into his body and by dying immediately afterward.
These are the first five paragraphs of a June 25, 1986 Los Angeles Times story.
BALTIMORE — University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias died of "cocaine intoxication" after ingesting an unusually pure dose of the drug that stopped his heart within minutes, Maryland's chief medical examiner said Tuesday.
Dr. John E. Smialek attributed Bias' death last Thursday morning directly to cocaine, "which interrupted the normal electrical control of his heartbeat, resulting in the sudden onset of seizures and cardiac arrest."
The 22-year-old Bias "was a very healthy individual" who showed no evidence of heart disease, Smialek said at a crowded news conference here Tuesday afternoon.
Smialek said there were no indications that Bias had used alcohol or taken any other drug in the hours preceding his collapse in his Washington Hall dormitory suite on the College Park campus.
He said that the autopsy conducted on Bias' body showed no evidence that Bias was a long-term user of cocaine and that it was "possible" that the fatal ingestion was the All-American's first encounter with the drug.
These are the first four paragraphs of a July 10, 1986 Orlando Sentinel story.
WASHINGTON — An assistant Maryland medical examiner said Wednesday that the autopsy of University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias indicates Bias most likely smoked the cocaine that killed him and that the drug may have been purified through a process called free-basing.
Dr. Dennis Smyth, the assistant state medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Bias, said that redness in Bias' windpipe and the high concentration of cocaine found in his blood suggest he did not ingest the drug in powder form through the nose as had been previously disclosed by the chief medical examiner.
''It all points to the most likely route of the cocaine was by inhalation,'' Smyth said.
The high concentration of the drug in Bias' blood stream -- 6.5 milligrams per liter -- also indicates that he did not snort the drug. ''We've never seen people snorting get levels that high,'' Smyth said.
Link to a blog page, written in September 2011, and titled Len Bias and the Decline of the Celtics on a personal blog called Nonstop 80s. His death was only part of the reason for the decline of the team's fan base and the beginning of a very long series of games that they lost. The bigger factor was the team's response to his death.
My analysis
It isn't pretty, but it has to be done for the benefit of the remaining fans.This is how a professional team in any sport deals with a tragedy
- They find out what happened. According to Maryland's Chief Medical Examiner, as reported on June 25, 1986 by the Los Angeles Times, "University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias died of 'cocaine intoxication' after ingesting an unusually pure dose of the drug that stopped his heart within minutes."
- They find out what mistakes were made that allowed this tragedy to happen.
- They change their procedures so that this mistake doesn't happen again. I would like to see every NBA team have a retired player mentor every new draftee, in order to help him adjust to being a professional basketball player. I would also like to see every current player and every draftee be subject to a random, unannounced medical test for illegal substances in his body.
- They do what they can to reassure their fans that this tragedy will never happen again. This means telling sports reporters and the team's fans about the changes that the team has made in their procedures.
Any team that does this is maintaining the social contract that they have with their fans, despite the sadness of the tragedy.
In fact, any team that does this during a tragedy deserves to have more fans because they have demonstrated, during a tragedy, that the team cares about their fans.
The Boston Celtics have never completed this process.
When they found out that their number two draft pick had died, they talked with the team's medical staff. They talked with the hospital doctors. They read the autopsy report.
That completed step one.
They had long discussions behind closed doors about team policies and procedures, and the policies of the National Basketball Association.
They discussed and debated whether they, as a team, should be more strict with the standards of conduct that they impose on any person who is (or will be) on their team.That completed step two.
And then they halted this very necessary process.
From my point of view, as a ex-fan, the Boston Celtics never made any changes to their procedures. Players who have a drug problem can still play on the team. College players who have been drafted by the Celtics can still have parties with drug dealers before their first game. The public has no assurance whatsoever that any of their players will show up at their next game because there is always the possibility that any of their players may die of a drug overdose.
The team has never, ever reassured their fans, not once since 1986, that the team will even find out if any of their players has a drug problem because they don't even take the vital step of drug-testing the players.
(clickable link)
Now you know why.
The Boston Celtics fan base has decreased since 1986 because the team violated the terms of their social contract. This caused the team to begin losing more games than they win.
I have a challenge for every person who is intellectually honest and who considers himself or herself a fan of the Celtics. It's in the form of two related tasks.
- Count how many pieces of team-licensed clothing you see tomorrow.
- Remember (or research and document) how many pieces of team-licensed clothing you saw daily in 1985, the year before Len Bias died. That was more than 30 years ago.
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Another way to perform this task is to compare the unit sales of team-licensed clothing at an authorized retail store with the same statistic from the same store from 30 years ago.This is what you will see.
Until the Boston Celtics finish the process that they began in 1986, by monitoring the off-court activities of their players during the playing season, and by telling their fans that they have changed their procedures, so that the death of Len Bias will never be repeated, the team will never get their old fan base back.
The people who pay to watch the game in the stands will not have much enthusiasm for the players while they play a game. The team will be playing just to earn a paycheck, not because the fans want them to win. That lack of enthusiasm by both parties in the social contract will continue to influence the on-court performance of the players, and ...
... and the team will continue to have losing seasons.
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