Terry Long (basketball)
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Terry Long was a collegiate basketball player with the Maryland Terrapins in the mid 1980's. He is most notable for being the last person to speak to highly-touted teammate Len Bias before Bias's shocking death on June 19, 1986. Less than two days after being selected by the defending champion Boston Celtics with the second overall pick in the 1986 NBA Draft, Bias - considered the "next Michael Jordan" by many [1][2] - flew in to Maryland from Boston at around 11:00 PM, and ate crabs with some teammates and a member of the football team. He left at approximately 2:00 AM on the 19th, drove to an off-campus gathering, which he attended briefly before returning to his dorm at 3:00 AM. Bias, who had ingested large quantities of cocaine at some earlier point, was talking with Long when he collapsed sometime between 6:00 and 6:32. According to Bias's sister (who only had a secondhand account of the story)[3], the player was sitting on a couch and leaned back as though he was going to sleep, but instead began to have a seizure. Bias died of a cardiac arrythmia, most likely related to the cocaine overdose. In the days following Bias's death, Long provided minimal information regarding the events, and was not implicated in the fateful events of that early morning.
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