Welcome to Edge of Sports, the podcast. I'm Dave Ziron. This week we are going back to the Basketball Butterfly Effect series with Hoops Officianado Ariasurazi.

Now, Basketball Butterfly Effect, if you haven't heard the other episodes, is where we look

at draft decisions and game out how the NBA world as we know it now would have been

dramatically altered if a critical decision had gone in the other direction.

So far, we looked at the 2003 draft and asked what the

world would be like if the Pistons had taken Carmelo Anthony instead of Darko. We have looked

at the 1996 draft and asked what if the Charlotte Hornets had held on to Kobe Bryant instead

of trading him to the Lakers for the Camelites-loving Vlad-Divats.

And we wondered how history would have been different if in 1984, the Portland Trailblazers

with the number two pick had resisted the siren song of Center Sam Bowie

and gone with this boring choice, Michael Jeffrey Jordan.

But today, ooh, a little more serious today because we are looking

at one of the most talented and star-crossed drafts in history, 1986. Now that's known as the

Len bias draft for many. The year when the unbelievably talented Maryland power forward died less

than two days after being selected second overall by the defending champs of Boston Celtics.

His death, of course, was ruled an overdose that resulted from cocaine.

Now, but it's not just about limb bias. Drugs and the punitive war on drugs,

aka suspensions, really just destroyed the careers of a generationally incredible crew of big men from that draft.

Chris Washburn, Roy Tarpley, William Bedford.

So we are going to talk about this because it's enough to talk about, but just a quick note about the 86 draft.

It also was the draft of perhaps the most skilled big man to ever live, Arvita Sabonis,

and he wouldn't see the NBA for another decade being in the USSR.

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