34 for 40 - #1

Motivation

Bias was cut twice from his junior high school team

Bias was in the midst of a critical phase in his basketball development, using a setback to fuel a fiery determination to be a great basketball player. He had been cut from Greenbelt Junior High school, in the seventh and eighth grades.

“It was one of the big shocks in my life,” Bias said in a 1985 Washington Post  article. “I remember going down the steps to look at the [team] list and my name wasn’t on it. I couldn’t believe it. Right then, I decided I was going to show these people that I could play the game.”

“He kept saying the whole time, ‘God, let me get better,’ ” says his junior high school and high school teammate Reginald Gaskins in the documentary Without Bias.

Young Leonard’s biggest motivation came from the teasing, his father recalled in Without Bias, explaining: “He was going to be the best.”

Excerpted from the book, Born Ready: the Mixed Legacy of Len Bias