LOCKER ROOM:The return to hoops prominence of the Celtics recalls the death of the brilliant Len Bias in circumstances that changed how many Americans viewed their sporting heroes

DO YOU have to be old enough to remember recession to identify with the sporting scene in those cities that served as career options for young Irish people? When I was young Boston wasn't so much a city as an alternative to long-term unemployment. Entire chunks of the social network you grew up with went to live in Boston rather than queue at the hatches in Werburgh street or Gardiner street or wherever. So it's a little habit to take an interest in Boston sports teams.

They've finished that incredible surgery to Boston's face that they called the Big Dig, and happily for a citizenry paying the price for the reconfiguration, the city's sports teams have stepped up to the plate as a beautiful distraction. The Boston Red Sox put an end to the curse of the Bambino (they were the club who sold Babe Ruth) and have won two baseball World Series in five years. The New England Patriots have become the NFL's leading dynasty. And perhaps most appealingly, the Boston Celtics are back.

With their name and their leprechaun logo spangled with green four-leafed clovers, the Celtics have always been an easy sell to the Irish heart.

The franchise's absence from the top table of their own sport is comparatively short, a mere 22 years or so, but it is associated with a tragedy that has such watershed significance in the American sporting psyche the sight of a Celtics team dominating again will be part of the process of absorbing it. There are little reminders built into the bodywork of the current Celtics team who have qualified for this year's NBA play-offs with the best record in the game this season. The side is built around three players (Ray Allen, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett) just as the last great Celtics side was built around Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish.

Back in 1986, when Boston last won the NBA title, their great rivalry with the LA Lakers was winding down. The showtime era for Magic Johnston's Lakers team featured a steady and charged rivalry with the Celtics, led by Bird, the so-called Hick from French Lick (in Indiana) whose white-farm-boy credentials provided an adequate blue-collar Boston retort to the Californian flamboyance of the Lakers.

(This year, incidentally, with the Lakers returning to good form after a short dip, the NBA is praying devoutly for a Lakers-Celtics finals series with which it can bathe in nostalgia and revive itself as a TV-ratings phenomenon.)

In 1986 with Bird and Kevin McHale getting old the Celtics appeared to have secured their own future when they signed the most sensationally promising young player in the colleges system, Len Bias from the University of Maryland. It was the perfect signing. Boston's Big Three were at that point rarely so clearly identifiable in sporting careers where excellence was just about to slowly wane. A young superstar to take some of the burden and to ease the franchise into a new time of dominance seemed the perfect solution.

Boston's legendary coach and club president Red Auerbach had been working for three years on making sure the Celtics secured Bias as their lien on the future.

If you look at pictures taken at the time of his signing, Bias, in his shiny suit and his Celtics hat sitting jauntily on his head as he holds up, for the cameras, the number 30 vest he was destined never to wear, has an air about him that defines the era. He is just about on the cocky side of innocent, a kid who was stepping from the briskly hyped world of colleges hoops into the limelight of the pro game.

He was by then already famous for his deeds on the colleges court, including one remarkable score against University of North Carolina (of which Michael Jordan was a recent graduate). It is a classic, imperishable moment which would become known after his death as the Jesus Dunk and can still be found on Youtube. Bias sank a jump shot from out on the left of court and instead of turning to sprint back down the court as every basketball player does when his duties switch from offence to defence he cut inside at top speed in a diagonal line toward the net, intercepting the first pass out of defence and ramming it home with a reverse slam dunk, executed with balletic grace. Having delivered the score he hung from the rim for a second and descended with arms outstretched - a score of such genius and chutzpah it made it inevitable he would be viewed as potentially the equal of Jordan, who was by then just two years into his pro career.

While Jordan had come out of College and been drafted by the Chicago Bulls, a franchise which would for several years struggle to find a way of making his genius convert into titles, Bias hopped aboard the Celtics bandwagon at what seemed just the right time. He was so good it was felt his acquisition guaranteed the Celtics dominance till well into the '90s.

Having been drafted by the Celtics, Bias travelled from Washington, DC, to Boston for the PR end of the deal, all those goofy shots holding the Celtics vest and telling the world this was a dream come true. He was coming out of amateur ranks and as well as a pro deal with the Celtics he signed an endorsement contract with Adidas.

He flew to Boston with his dad, but his father returned alone to Washington and conducted a press conference on his son's behalf. Later that night after the media had dispersed young Len Bias himself flew back in from Boston on a shuttle flight, picked up one of the first perks of the pro life, a new car leased for him by his agent, and drove back to campus at the University of Maryland

His car was spotted in one of the heavier areas of town where drugs were freely available if you were willing to take the risk of driving there to buy them. At some later stage he drove to a party, the new King of the NBA. He remained a short while before heading back to college.

Somewhere along the way that night, Len Bias consumed quite a lot of cocaine. According to the coroner's report this induced the cardiac arrhythmia which caused him to collapse while talking to a friend at 6:30am the following morning. He was dead on arrival at hospital.

Some 11,000 people went to his memorial service. Red Auerbach compared the impact of Bias's death on the city of Boston to the assassination of John F Kennedy. Jesse Jackson spoke and expressed the wish the death of Len Bias would be a lesson to every kid following him along the path.

Of course it wasn't. Professional sports was on the road to unfettered excess, and the death of one hugely talented kid was no cause for turning back. The pathos of his parents suing everyone right up to Adidas for a slice of what was coming and the sight of corporate America resisting stoutly provided its own lesson.

It was too late by then probably, but the death of Len Bias represented the loss of innocence for many Americans in terms of how they viewed their sport. And it set the Celtics back on their heels for many years.

If they go all the way this year Len Bias will be much talked about again. None of the great lessons Jesse Jackson hoped would be learned were ever really taken on board, but 22 years later the Celtics' return to prominence might just spark something more than nostalgia and encourage a reassessment of the Babylon into which American professional sport has descended.