40 for 34 # 18 - June 2

Bias's Mystery Friend

As He Became a Star, Len Bias Started to

Spend More Time with Brian Tribble.

Len Bias started spending more time with Brian Tribble during his junior and senior years at Maryland. Bias got to know Tribble during pickup basketball games on the Maryland campus. Their friendship grew quickly and perplexed some of those who knew Bias well. Tribble used cocaine with Bias the night Bias suffered a seizure and later died. He was the only person who faced criminal charges related to the death of Bias.

Bob Wagner, Len's high school coach, says he first heard of Tribble after Bias died and was surprised the two were friends. Johnnie Walker was Len's youth coach and mentor. Brian Waller learned the game with Bias as a youth and was his high school teammate. Both Waller said they met Tribble just once before Bias died. Keith Gatlin, a Terps teammate of Bias, remembers Tribble as a good guy, but one with whom he had little contact.

When Waller would ask about Tribble, Bias would defend him. “He’s my friend, he likes workin’ out, he likes playin’ ball, likes lifting weights, that’s my man, OK?” recalls Waller.

Walker says he first met Tribble when he stopped by to visit Bias in the Leonardtown dorms. Another time Walker stopped at Leonardtown for a planned meeting with Bias and discovered that he was at Tribble’s apartment a couple miles north of the Maryland campus. When he got there, Walker asked Bias what there was to do at the apartment. “ ‘Oh, we were just up here working out,’ ” Walker remembers Bias saying. “Tribble had some weight machines there. I said, ‘Why would you have to come up to his apartment to work out when you can work out anytime you want in a room full of workout equipment? I don’t understand it.’ ”

A couple of days after Bias died, Walker sought out Tribble to try and make sense of his friend’s death, saying he wasn’t “satisfied with it all.” He says Tribble told him then that he and Bias were using cocaine the day he stopped by the apartment looking for Bias and that he thought Walker had found out then that Bias was using cocaine.

Excerpted from the book,

Born Ready: the Mixed Legacy of Len Bias

Buy autographed copies

as a Father's Day Gift

The audio for this post was narrated by the author,

Dave Ungrady.

And listen to more about Len's early life in Episode 2 of the narrative podcast series, Len Bias: A Mixed Legacy