Len Bias was a franchise pick for the Boston Celtics. When he died it created a vacuum that affected the Celtics. They are just now recovering from this devastating loss. That is how important he was to the team and shows the magnitude of his death affected the entire organization.

As a young kid obsessed with basketball, this one hit me hard. I remember him dominating my favorite team (Villanova) when I was growing up - just jumping over everybody. I still have the SI cover somewhere from when he died. If there's a (selfish) silver lining, I've never had any interest in doing cocaine - I think Len Bias was a big reason why.

Len Bias was supposed to take over the torch from Larry Bird and carry on the Celtics dominance.  His athletic ability had frequently been compared to Michael Jordan.  But he had a drug overdose in a college dorm room not long after he was drafted #2 by the Celtics in the 1986 draft.  Unfortunately a few years later his younger brother, another stud ball player who was expected to go pro, was murdered in a parking lot.

I was young when Len Bias died, but I grew up in Maryland and was very familiar with this tragedy. Crack had hit the country very hard, especially in DC. The damage that it did to communities was huge, but it took the death of an otherwise unstoppable person in Len Bias to show much of the public the type of danger that crack can pose to an individual. Len Bias' death was a tragic warning to many people.