A great article on the unfortunate 1986 NBA draft

[POJO_Risin]

Draft daze
The sad saga behind the talented NBA Class of '86
Posted: Friday June 23, 2006 12:27PM; Updated: Friday June 23, 2006 9:21PM

By Paul Forrester, SI.com

He hadn't called all day.

Really, it shouldn't have been all that alarming. Roy Tarpley was a 24-year-old professional basketball player with a host of obligations. Perhaps he wasn't home. That's what his boss, Dallas Mavericks GM Norm Sonju, thought.

But some knew better. Like his mother, who had called Sonju before Roy played a game in the NBA to tell the Mavs she thought her son was using drugs, a claim the son didn't refute in the summer before making his professional basketball debut. And his sponsor, who knew that after more than a year of 12-step meetings and three phone calls a day, that to not hear from Roy was to worry that the drugs and alcohol that had been a part of his life for so long were back.

So the sponsor went to Tarpley's house on that late December day in 1988, not to knock on his door, but to search through his garbage, where he found the empty beer cans that told him all he needed to know. A few minutes later, the sponsor found Tarpley in a bedroom with a hefty stash of cocaine.

Sadly, Tarpley's tale wasn't an anomaly for the NBA Draft Class of 1986. What was originally thought of as a talented class, with the likes of Brad Daugherty and Chuck Person, would ultimately be remembered for a few of its other gems who threw their futures away: Chris Washburn, an athletic 6-foot-11 center who averaged 18 points and seven rebounds as a senior at N.C. State; Tarpley, who not only was a beast on the boards, but also possessed a phenomenal jump shot and the ball-handling skills of a Dirk Nowitzki; and Maryland's Len Bias, a bigger version of Michael Jordan and with a better jump shot.

The Class of '86 had everything except, well, luck, and in some cases, smarts. To what else do you attribute the fact that more than half of the pro careers born in the first round that June night were shortened by drug or alcohol use, injury or illness? How do you place the death of a promising rookie 48 hours after the draft into perspective? Twenty years after that fateful draft, the men responsible for the selections that went bad, are still struggling for answers.

[POJO_Risin]

[POJO_Risin]

Blindsided

No one stretched the limits of imagination in the spring of 1986 like Bias, a 6-foot-8 forward and two-time ACC Player of the Year. "He was evaluated in the same breath as Jordan," said former Celtics GM Jan Volk, who selected Bias with the No. 2 overall selection that June and admits he would have taken him at No. 1 had Boston had the top pick. "[On the court], he was one miserable, mean sonofabitch. He was a very competitive guy who took no quarter and wanted to win at everything."

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski considered Bias one of the two best players he had ever coached against.

"He could handle the ball, he could shoot it and he was just what we needed," Celtics president Red Auerbach told The Boston Globe.

That promise was shattered less than two days after the draft when Bias died of a cocaine overdose, leaving a Boston franchise that had won the NBA title less than two weeks earlier, shaken over the loss.

"We had followed him a long time," Volk recalled. "He had been a counselor at Red's summer camp for a couple of years. We did a number of things to check his background that law enforcement people would consider to be standard in doing this type of background check. That included a physical exam and a drug screen, which [we learned] after Bias' death had violated the collective bargaining agreement. It came up clean."

Still, talk to some other GMs from that period and they'll tell you about the rumors that surrounded various members of the class, vague hints of substance abuse that were consistently refuted by those who knew or should have known. "We spent a lot of money hiring people to do interviews and find out as much as we could about the character of people," said Sonju. "I've got six inches of paperwork on [Tarpley], and everything was positive. We contacted schools and churches and tried to do the best we could. Obviously we didn't do very well.

"Can it be predicted beforehand? Not if people lie, not if people want a player drafted because it helps their program and they're not honest with you... or [perhaps] they didn't know or didn't want to know."

The desire for recognition, job security and money is not limited to hangers-on, sneaker reps and head-in-the-sand college coaches. Long before Bias died in a college dormitory, the NBA was filled with tales of drug use. From John Lucas to Micheal Ray Richardson to David Thompson to Quintin Dailey, talent sometimes trumped suspicion, as long as the team was winning. But by the mid-'80s, the celebrity and riches to be had in the league opened up the door to cocaine and all of its supposed glamour -- and its addiction.

[POJO_Risin]

Roy Tarpley...1988 Western Finals...Tarpley leads Blackmon and Aguire and the Mavs to the seventh game...before losing to LA...

[POJO_Risin]

Draft daze (cont.)
Posted: Friday June 23, 2006 12:27PM; Updated: Friday June 23, 2006 9:21PM

By Paul Forrester, SI.com

"At that particular point in time, although no one wanted somebody who was using drugs," said Volk, "a one-time or occasional use that appeared on a background check -- and I have to emphasize that wasn't the case [with Bias] -- would not have been viewed then with the same amount of concern as now. There was simply less understanding of the issues."

"That whole drug culture was kind of new to us," adds Orlando Magic vice president Pat Williams, who was the GM of the Philadelphia 76ers in '86 and dealt the top pick in the draft to Cleveland. "I think we thought we were being thorough in doing our homework, but we were all perhaps a bit naïve. Did we have the ability to really dig or did we think it was all that important? Were we too trusting? I don't know if we'll ever truly know the answers. But we were certainly caught flat-footed."

Immediate Impact
If the NBA has a lucky charm, it's Williams, a three-time winner of the draft lottery as an executive with Orlando. But six years before Williams welcomed Shaquille O'Neal into the league as a member of the Magic, he passed on the opportunity to select Bias.

"We never interviewed him, never worked him out," said Williams. "We certainly scouted him heavily, but there was something about him that frightened [our scout] Jack McMahon -- something about his makeup."

Not enamored with the raw skills of North Carolina's Daugherty (who was taken No. 1 by Cleveland), the Sixers traded the pick to the Cavs for Roy Hinson, a forward who never meshed with then-Sixer Charles Barkley. As bad as that trade turned out for Philly, it had nowhere the impact that Bias' death had on its Atlantic Division rivals.

"I made a statement shortly after [Bias'] death that the effects of this tragedy would be felt for 10, 12, 15 years, but that the immediate effect would not be significant," said Volk. "A year later, I acknowledged I was wrong."

Having won the franchise's 16th title nine days before the draft, the Celtics envisioned Bias as a key element in defending their crown. The Boston team that would take the floor in the fall of '86 would be the same that left it in triumph in June, albeit older. That's where Bias was to fit in, reducing the minutes for Larry Bird and Kevin McHale. Without Bias, Boston was forced to play the duo 40 minutes each night.

[POJO_Risin]

Washburn...a career average of 3 points and 2 boards...nice...

[POJO_Risin]

Draft daze (cont.)
Posted: Friday June 23, 2006 12:27PM; Updated: Friday June 23, 2006 9:21PM

By Paul Forrester, SI.com


At the end of the 1986-87 season McHale broke a bone in his right foot. With McHale at less than full strength and Bill Walton and Scott Wedman hobbled through the bulk of the regular season and much of the playoffs with injuries of their own, the Celtics reached the Finals, but lost to Magic Johnson and the Lakers in six games.

"We found ourselves probably one quality player short," said Volk. "There was a little bit of room for improvement that [Bias] probably could have supplied."

But Bias wasn't just expected to help the Celtics as a rookie; he was supposed to be the caretaker of Boston's future, heir to a throne of on-court leading men that stretched from Bob Cousy to Bill Russell to John Havlicek to Bird.

"We viewed him as the opportunity to slide into the next generation at a high level competitively," said Volk. "The expectations were very high for him, although we thought we had a luxury for him to come along at a pace that didn't overwhelm him, in which he could contribute at what would be a comfortable pace for him. One can only speculate, in the context of Bird and McHale and Parish and [Dennis] Johnson and [Danny] Ainge, that everybody's game would have been elevated for a longer period of time. The minutes would have been spread out and the championship here or there might have made things different."

But with Bias gone, reality soon hit. Playoff appearances followed, but Boston's days as the league's preeminent team was soon replaced by the Bad Boy Pistons and Michael Jordan's Chicago Dynasty.

"I don't think there's a textbook strategy in how to deal with [the death of a player]," said Volk.

League-wide impact
As difficult as Boston's predicament was, it wasn't a constant distraction. For those teams that drafted Washburn (Golden State, third overall), William Bedford (Phoenix, seventh) and Tarpley, the trouble was just beginning.

"When I think about it, sweat literally starts pouring out of my head," says Sonju, 20 years after he selected Tarpley with the seventh pick in hopes of elevating the Mavericks from playoff participant to Finals contender. "I don't think anyone can imagine what it does to a franchise when you can't count on your best player."

[POJO_Risin]

Draft daze (cont.)
Posted: Friday June 23, 2006 12:27PM; Updated: Friday June 23, 2006 9:21PM

By Paul Forrester, SI.com


On the court, Tarpley arrived in Dallas as good as advertised, blocking shots, rebounding and scoring a little off the bench as the Mavs won a then franchise-best 55 games his rookie season. He was even better in his second year, averaging 13.5 points and 11.8 rebounds while still coming off the bench. Named the league's Sixth Man of the Year, Tarpley dazzled in the playoffs: 17.9 points, 12.9 rebounds and 52 percent shooting. By the time he was done, Dallas had advanced to within one game of the Finals, losing to the Lakers in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals.

"We were good," remembered Sonju. "We were right at the 10-yard line. The next year I was sure we were going to get back. And then things started happening."

Things like Tarpley being suspended for a total of 49 games for violating the league's anti-drug policy in 1989; being arrested the following season for driving while intoxicated and resisting arrest; and getting banned from the league in October 1991 for violating the NBA's substance abuse policy for a third time. Tarpley was out for three years before he was reinstated, only to be given a permanent ban a year later for using alcohol and violating a court order.

Having made only one short-lived playoff appearance in the three years since their promising run to the conference finals, the Mavs decided to unload several veterans and rebuild.

"We lost our moment in time," Sonju said. "We had older players past their great years. So we made a knowing decision after the '91-92 season -- I remember sitting in the meeting -- that we were going to bite the bullet and start over. We let Rolando [Blackman] go, we eventually let Derek [Harper] go, we had already let Sam [Perkins] go. We literally were going to start over."

Similar decisions were made by Golden State (Washburn) and Phoenix, which had tabbed Bedford, a 7-foot shot-blocking machine out of Memphis, to be its center of the future. After playing in only 43 games over his first two seasons, Washburn was shipped to the Atlanta, where in 29 games he averaged two points and in 1989 was banned from the NBA for life for violating the league's drug policy a third time.

Bedford wore out his welcome in Phoenix after admitting to using cocaine while testifying against his teammates as part of an investigation into drug use by Suns players. Traded to Detroit in '87, Bedford spent much of the next six seasons in and out of rehab or jail. (Efforts to reach Bedford, Tarpley or Washburn for this article were unsuccessful.)

[POJO_Risin]

"I guess you're always thinking you're going to get around it, that it's not a big deal," says Williams. "But by and large we didn't know the depth of the problem."

Lasting effect
The NBA attacked the drug problem in '86 in the most American of ways -- with money. Private investigators were hired, computer databases established, references were cross-checked and league penalties stiffened. Largely, the effort has worked.

"I think society has changed ultimately," says Todd Boyd, a professor of popular culture at USC. "There's a different societal understanding about this issue now than was the case in '86, and I think [the death of Bias] was one of the things that helped to bring some public awareness to the issue. Someone who engages in such activity now can't say they don't know what the implications could be. In '86, I don't know that that was so much the case."

The idea of missing out on the riches that an NBA career promises may be the greatest weapon the league has to keep itself clean.

"In '86, it was not a given that a guy would be able to go from college to the NBA and become wealthy and famous in the way that has become the case now," Boyd said. "We were only two years into Michael Jordan's career, and a lot of things changed because of him. For someone to be in such a position with such an opportunity and knowingly take a chance on that ... there are people who will do it, but there's enough history that would say to that person that [substance abuse] is not the thing to do because you're about to get paid."

But the toll for that realization has been steep. Just ask Washburn, who is reportedly playing in Switzerland. Or Bedford, who spent a year in a Texas jail for cocaine use and was later arrested for owing more than $300,000 in child support. Or Tarpley, who at 41 is attempting a comeback in basketball with the Muskegon Mayhem of the CBA, having lost $22 million to his myriad suspensions. Or anyone working for the Celtics on June 19, 1986.

Just ask Sonju, who lived through it. "That year was just the apex for sadness," he says.

[POJO_Risin]

Great Article...

I know Tarpley tried out for a bunch of teams last year...Cleveland is one of them...

before going to the CBA...

he's just to much of an NBA gamble...

[ALinChainz]

That was a great article, missed it until today ...

Was thinking when the Celts were in line to take Bias ... being a Piston fan ... "thats just what they need them bastards."

Tarpley a monster at U of M ... should have been the best of the bunch after the passing of Bias.

Washburn ... along with Bedford .... total wastes of air ... too bad.