BOSTON - It is cold and rainy outside my hotel window. I am in Boston this weekend, checking out a Red Sox game before I head to Portland, Maine to whatch the AA Sea Dogs (Boston Red Sox) vs. the AA New Hampshire Fisher Cats (Toronto Blue Jays).

Went to the North End for dinner last night, walking down Commercial street, left on Henchmen (what a name for a street in Little Italy !) and down Causeway. I look up, and I'm at the Boston Garden. I don't give a damn what bank currently rents/owns the building or the lease, I'm at the Garden.

I begin thinking about the state of the Celtics, how it's been exactly 20 years since they won a championship. Then I think about the Knicks, and how things could be as bad as that situation down there. Then I start to trace the time line in my head- when did things go so bad for the Celtics ?

Was it Bird and McHale's departure ? Was it that they didn't have an answer to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls' dominance in the early to mid 1990's ? Then it hits me like a sledgehammer to the nose...

Len Bias.

Then I realize, it's the 20th anniversary of his death. It was June 19, of 1986, less than 48 hours after the Celts took him as the overall number two pick in the '86 draft. This was a pick they had recieved from Seattle for Gerald Henderson, and seeing as Seattle had won 32 games that year, they ended up with the number two pick, behind Cleveland, that they in turn gave to Boston. So, despite winning the NBA championship a few weeks before, the Celts would be able to snag a top flight college kid to add to a lineup that boasted Bird, McHale, Robert Parrish, and Danny Ainge.

It was a foregoneconclusion by mid May that Cleveland would take Brad Daugherty with the number one pick. It had been a forgone conclusion by the Celts the summer before that they would do whatever it takes to get Len Bias. Ainge had gone down to Maryland, where Bias went to school and grew up, after the '85 season had ended for the Celtics. Ainge had heard quite a bit about Bias, and spent a weekend playing pick up, neighborhhod basketball games with Bias and his buddies from the Terrapins team. Ainge was smitten with Bias, returned to the Celtics for cmap in September, and could speak nothing but praise for the young Bias. Bird, went to the NCAA championship game and watched Bias piggyback the Terrapins, as they walked over North Carolina. Bias was ACC player of the eyar (for the second year in a row).

So, with little hesitation, after winning the third championship in six years, the Celtics, in 1986, drafted Len Bias second, in an attempt to add youth and athleticism to an aging team. Bias, it was decided, would be the Celtics' answer to Jordan and the growing beast in the east, the Bulls. Bias would also be able to allow Bird and McHale less minutes on the floor, perhaps prolonging each of the super stars careers.

Bias, aftermeeting with the head honchos in Boston, flew home with his dad, and then went back over to his dorm room at UMaryland "for a little going away party", as one of his friends described it to the Washington Post twenty years ago. According to reports, Bias did enough cocaine to scare even Robin Williams into Betty Ford, and died of an overdose.

When Larry Bird was stopped in an airport and presented the news by two beat writers for the Boston Globe, Bird responed: That's the cruelest thing I've ever heard....

And ever since, the Celtics have never been the same. They have never won another NBA championship since Lenny Bias. In fact, another young, star player died three years later, Reggie LEwis, from heart complications. It is as if the Celtics have been in a rebuilding mode for the last 20 years, and the answer isn't Cutting Board, I mean, Paul Pierce, who gets stabbed 19 times in the Roxy in Boston, and is able to play a month later, but takes an elbow to the mellon in the playoffs, and wraps his entire dome in gauze. ARE YOU #### KIDDING ME, RED ?

Never has a player affected an organization as much as Bias, despite never wearing a Celtics uniform, or played one minute on the Parquet Floor. His name still echoes through the upper management offices of the Celtics' front office.

His name was Len Bias, and he is the greatest "what if" of all time...