Beantown is still trying to recover from the shock that was the NBA draft lottery, sponsored by the Pacific Northwest.  Each time the NBA's most historically significant team looks as if it cannot get any worse, the four-leaf clover finds yet another way to yield bad luck.  The death of Reggie Lewis, the injury plagued end of Larry, McHale, and the Chief, the selling of the proverbial soul for Pitino, trading Chauncey Billips, and the loss of the Oden/Durant sweepstakes are all events that any franchise would struggle to over come.  Adding them all up, the sum is utter NBA disaster and disarray.  Then 30+ year old NBA fans things back to his/her childhood and views the present state of the Celtics as "unfathomable".  How could the 16 time World Champs have possibly fallen this far?  How could the karma have changed so suddenly and so violently?  The end of every dynasty has a dramatic event, a turning point, a singular event that may seem innocent at the time, but proves to be the undoing of the seemingly immovable object.  Enter Len Bias.

Just eleven days prior to the untimely and tragic death of Maryland legend Len Bias, the Celtics had won their 16th NBA Championship, far and away the most in NBA history at that time.  The Celtics happend upon the #2 pick in the upcoming draft in a trade that sent Gerald Henderson to Seattle.  This was truly "the best of times" for a franchise that had seen better times than any team in league history.  Bird, McHale, and Parrish were in their respective primes, Jabbar was nearing the end in Los Angeles, and Celtics were primed to get a player who could work into the rotation slowly and take over for Bird when he decided to pass the torch. 

The draft featured two "sure-fire" NBA stars.  The first was the 7'0" center from North Carolina, Brad Daugherty, while the second was a tremendously gifted 6'8 swingman from Maryland, Len Bias (if this begins to sound eerily familiar. . .).  Cleveland, with the first pick, did what any team would do, taking the safer pick in the center.  This left Boston with the player that some publications at the time called the best forward prospect of all time.  The Celtics were set. . .so they thought.

The newly selected Bias celebrated his fame and fortune with his friends.  An evening of crack-cocaine later, Bias is no longer with us, and the wheels of age, injuries, and other unexplainable turns of misfortune lead the Celtics to, what Dickens' calls, the "worst of times". 

Outside of the drafting of Paul Pierce, and the historic comeback win in game 3 of the 2002 playoffs vs. the Nets, it's hard to find anything good that has happened for Red's bunch.  Nothing remains of the Celtic dynasty.  Red, the Garden, and Hall of Fame rosters seem closer to the Devil Rays future.  The Celtics have even watched the Miami Heat, who didn't exist at the time of their last title, and the Red Sox. . .THE RED SOX win world championships since.  Oh how the mighty have fallen.