KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Maryland basketball star Len Bias, who was chosen No. 2 by the Boston Celtics in the 1986 NBA draft before dying days later of a drug overdose, was chosen for induction into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame on Sunday.
Bias leads a group of six players and two coaches that will be enshrined in Kansas City next November.
The other players to make up the class are Hersey Hawkins, who scored more than 3,000 points during his career at Bradley; UCLA‘s David Greenwood, the No. 2 pick of the Chicago Bulls in the 1979 draft; Jim Jackson, the two-time Big Ten Player of the Year at Ohio State; Antawn Jamison, who led North Carolina to back-to-back Final Fours; and Kansas star Paul Pierce, who went on to play 19 years in the NBA, mostly with the Celtics.
The two coaches selected for the Hall of Fame were Rick Byrd, who won 805 games at Maryville, Lincoln Memorial and Belmont, and Tom Penders, who took four schools to the NCAA tournament.