Early life
Bradley was born on July 28, 1943 in Crystal City, Missouri, the only child of Warren, a banker, and Susan “Susie” (ne Crowe) Bradley (d. 1995), a teacher. Politicians and politics were standard dinner-table topics in Bradley’s childhood, and he described his father as a “solid Republican” who was an elector for Thomas E. Dewey in the 1948 presidential election.
He began playing basketball in fourth grade. He was a basketball star at Crystal City High School, where he scored 3,068 points in his scholastic career, and was twice named All-American. He received 75 college scholarship offers, although he applied to only five schools.
Bradley’s basketball ability was enhanced by his unusually wide peripheral vision, which he worked to improve by focusing on faraway objects while walking. During his high school years, Bradley maintained a rigorous practice schedule, a habit he carried through college. He would work on the court for “three and a half hours every day after school, nine to five on Saturday, one-thirty to five on Sunday, and, in the summer, about three hours a day. He put ten pounds of lead slivers in his sneakers, set up chairs as opponents and dribbled in a slalom fashion around them, and wore eyeglass frames that had a piece of cardboard taped to them so that he could not see the floor, for a good dribbler never looks at the ball.”
Basketball
College
Playing at Princeton, 1964
Considered the top high school player in the country, Bradley initially chose to attend Duke University in the fall of 1961. However, after breaking his foot in the summer of 1961 during a baseball game and thinking about his college decision outside of basketball, he decided to enroll at Princeton University instead. He had been awarded a scholarship at Duke, but not at Princeton (the Ivy League does not allow its members to award athletic scholarships). In his freshman year at Princeton, Bradley averaged more than 30 points per game for the freshman team, and at one point during his freshman season, he made 57 consecutive free throws. The following year, as a sophomore, he was a varsity starter, in Butch van Breda Kolff’s first year as the Princeton coach.
Bradley was named to The Sporting News All-American first team in early 1963, in his sophomore year, and the coach of the St. Louis Hawks believed he was ready to play professional basketball at that point. The AP and United Press International polls both put Bradley on the second team, establishing him as the top sophomore player in the country. The following year, as a junior, The Sporting News again named him to its All-American team (the only junior) and additionally named him player of the year.
Olympic medal record
Men’s Basketball
Gold
1964 Tokyo
United States
At the Olympic basketball trials in April 1964, Bradley played guard instead of his usual forward position, and was still a top performer at the trials. He was chosen unanimously for the Olympic team and was also elected captain of the Princeton basketball team for the following season. The Olympic team went on to win its sixth consecutive gold medal.
In total, Bradley scored 2,503 points at Princeton, averaging 30.2 points per game. He was awarded the 1965 James E. Sullivan Award, presented annually to the United States’ top amateur athlete, the first basketball player to win the honor, and the second Princeton student to win the award, after runner Bill Bonthron in 1934.
Bradley holds a number of Ivy League career records, including total and average points (1,253/29.83, respectively), and free throws made and attempted (409/468, 87.4%). Ivy League season records he holds similarly include total and average points (464/33.14, 1964) and most free throws made (153 in 170 attempts, 90.0%, 1962-1963). He also holds the career point record at Princeton and many other school records, including the top ten slots in the category of total points scored in a game.
Bradley wrote his senior thesis at Princeton about Harry S. Truman, titled “On That Record I Stand”. He graduated with honors and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship at Worcester College, University of Oxford. Bradley’s tenure at Princeton was the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winning author John McPhee’s first book, A Sense of Where You Are.
Professional
Bill Bradley
Position(s)
Small forward/Shooting guard
Jersey #(s)
24
Born
July 28, 1943 (1943-07-28) (age 66)
Crystal City, Missouri
Career information
Year(s)
19671977
NBA Draft
1965 / Round: n/a / Pick: territorial
Selected by New York Knicks
College
Princeton
Professional team(s)
Olimpia Milano (19651966)
New York Knicks (19671977)
Career stats (NBA)
Points
9,217
Assists
2,533
Steals
209
Stats @ Basketball-Reference.com
Career highlights and awards
New York Knicks #24 retired
1965 USBWA College Player of the Year
NBA All-Star (1973)
Basketball Hall of Fame as player
Bradley’s graduation year, 1965, was the last year that the NBA’s territorial rule was in effect, which gave professional teams first rights to draft players who attended college within 50 miles of the team. The New York Knicks drafted Bradley as a territorial pick the 1965 draft, but he did not sign a contract with the team immediately. While attending Oxford, he played professional basketball briefly in Italy’s Lega Basket Serie A for Olimpia Milano (196566 season), where the team won a European Champions Cup. He signed a contract with the Knicks in April 1967, and was to join the team mid-season, after serving six months in the United States Air Force Reserve. He was released from the military earlier than he had expected, and began practicing with the Knicks in December.
In Bradley’s rookie season, he joined the team late, having also missed the entire preseason. He was placed in the back court, although he had spent his high school and college careers as a forward. Both he and the team did not do well, and in the following season, he was returned to the forward slot. Then, in his third season, the Knicks won their first-ever NBA championship, followed by the second in the 197273 season, when he made the only All-Star Game appearance of his career. Over ten years with the Knicks, Bradley scored a total of 9,217 points, an average of 12.4 points per game, with his best season average being 16.1 points per game in the 197273 season. He was also the first player to win an Olympic gold medal, a European Champions Cup, and an NBA championship, a feat that has only been matched by Manu Ginbili.
During his NBA career, Bradley used his fame on the court to explore social as well as political issues, meeting with journalists, government officials, academics, businesspeople, and social activists. He also worked as an assistant to the director of the Office of Economic Opportunity in Washington, D.C., and as a teacher in the street academies of Harlem. In 1976, he also became an author by publishing Life on the Run. Using a 20-day stretch of time during one season as the main focus of the book, he chronicled his experiences in the NBA and the people he met along the way. He noted in the book that he had initially signed only a four-year contract, and that he was uncomfortable using his celebrity status to earn extra money endorsing products as other players did.
Retiring from basketball in 1977, he was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1982, along with teammate Dave DeBusschere. In 1984, the Knicks retired his number 24 jersey; he was the fourth player so honored by the Knicks, after Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, and DeBusschere.
Politics
Politics were a frequent subject of discussion in the Bradley household, and some of his relatives held local and county political offices. He majored in history at Princeton, and was present in the Senate chamber when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. He spent his time at Oxford focusing on European political and economic history. In 1978, he said that congressman Mo Udall, himself a former professional basketball player, had told him ten years earlier that professional sports could help prepare him for politics, depending on what he did with his non-playing time.
Senate
After four years of political campaigning for Democratic candidates around New Jersey, Bradley decided in the summer of 1977 to run for the Senate himself. He felt his time had been well-spent in “paying his dues”. The seat was held by liberal Republican and four-term incumbent Clifford P. Case. Case lost the primary election to anti-tax conservative Jeffrey Bell, who, like Bradley, was 34 years old as the campaign season began. Bradley won the seat in the general election with about 56 percent of the vote. During the campaign, Yale football player John Spagnola was Bradley’s bodyguard and driver.
In the Senate, Bradley acquired a reputation for being somewhat aloof and was thought of as a “policy wonk”, specializing in complex reform initiatives. Among these was the 1986 overhaul of the federal tax code, co-sponsored with Dick Gephardt, which reduced the tax rate schedule to just two brackets, 15 percent and 28 percent, and eliminated many kinds of deductions. Domestic policy initiatives that Bradley led or was associated with included: reform of child support enforcement; legislation
