JUST IN: A key player for the Boston celtics was hurt, and a doctor has confirmed that he is
JUST IN: A key player for the Boston celtics was hurt, and a doctor has confirmed that he is
Note: For the 30th anniversary of Len Bias’s passing, this account has been updated and revised from its original STATter911 publication.
From five o’clock in the evening until after two in the morning, the phones in the newsroom rang nonstop. Bill Rayment was one of the many people taking calls. One of the kindest people in television, Rayment, endured a great deal of abuse from irate viewers. Though it wasn’t the director of the 11:00 p.m. newscast’s typical job, the overworked assignment desk needed assistance. Outraged were the callers. They corrected us, they said. They weren’t by themselves. The news industry itself also voiced criticism. That night we got a bad rap from one of the best sportscasters in the nation. It was “too soon,” he said.
What transgression had we made as journalists? We disclosed a painful reality regarding the unexpected passing of a highly regarded young athlete.
I was the first to report that Len Bias, a 22-year-old college basketball star, had used cocaine in the hours prior to his death on the same day he passed away. The Boston Celtics had selected Bias two days prior. My reporting was entirely accurate, as was the work of my colleagues at Channel 9 in Washington. The athlete from the University of Maryland was later declared dead from cocaine-induced cardiac arrhythmia. People were not ready to hear this news in 1986, particularly the Maryland Terrapins and Len Bias fans in the area.
Death threats started to arrive in the mail in the days that followed. After only ten months or so as a TV reporter, the public already wanted me dead. It wasn’t like this today, when social media threats and unrelenting criticism of journalists are commonplace. It required a little more work in the mid-1980s, especially from the person who sent me a big envelope with a silhouette target on it, complete with curly hair, multiple gunshot wounds, and the words “Go Terps” written on it.
That Thursday morning, at about 6:45 a.m., the phone rang. I had been sleeping soundly. As soon as I picked up the phone, I recognized the voice. “Dave, they took Len Bias, who was having a cardiac arrest, to Leland.” The words were spoken, but I’m not sure if my hazy mind processed them. I was able to say, “Huh?”Len Bias was just transported to Leland via ambulance. He is having a heart attack. I was awake now.
When I was a volunteer firefighter and dispatcher in Prince George’s County, Maryland, ten years ago, I made a friend who was calling. Though I’m not into college hoops, I was acquainted with Len Bias. If you were a resident of the Washington, DC, area in the early to
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