William Warren "Bill" Bradley (born July 28, 1943) is an
American hall of fame basketball player, Rhodes scholar, and former U.S. Senator from New Jersey and presidential candidate, who opposed Vice President Al Gore for the Democratic Party's nomination for President in the 2000
election.
College basketball
Bradley was born in Crystal City, Missouri to Warren Bradley, a banker, and
Susie Crowe.[1] Bradley began playing basketball in
fourth grade. He was a basketball star at Crystal City High School, scoring 3,068 points in
his scholastic career and twice being named an All-American. With stellar academic credentials as well, he received 75
scholarship offers.
The 6' 5" (1.96 m) Bradley chose Princeton University, even though
Ivy League colleges could not offer athletic scholarships. At Princeton, under coach
Butch van Breda Kolff, Bradley was a three-time All-American and the 1965 National
Player of the Year. With Bradley in tow, the Tigers captured the Ivy League championship in each of his three varsity seasons.
During his sophomore campaign, Bradley averaged 27.3 points and 12.2 rebounds a game while hitting 89.3 percent of his free
throws. Among his greatest games was a 41-point effort in an 80-78 loss to heavily favored Michigan in the 1964 Holiday Festival (Bradley fouled out with his team leading 75-63), and a
58-point outburst against Wichita State in the 1965 NCAA tournament, which was a single game record. In total, Bradley
scored 2,503 points at Princeton, averaging 30.2 points per game. In 1965, Bradley became the first basketball player chosen as
winner of the James E. Sullivan Award, presented to the United States' top
amateur athlete in the country.
Bill Bradley playing basketball in 1964
As a freshman, Bradley sank 57 successive free throws, a record unmatched by any other player, college or professional. As a
sophomore, he led the league in rebounds, field goals, free throws, and total points, and, when he fouled out after scoring a
record-breaking 40 points in an NCAA tournament game with Saint Joseph's in
Philadelphia, was given an unprecedented ovation.
In his junior year, he scored 51 points against Harvard, more than the entire
opposing team had scored before he was taken out, and his 33.1 points-per-game average that season set an Ivy League record.
In his senior year, when he was captain, he led Princeton to the highest national ranking it had ever had in basketball. The
Tigers placed third behind UCLA and Michigan in the NCAA
tournament, as a result of an 118-82 victory over Wichita State in the consolation game of the semi-finals. In the Wichita game,
Bradley scored 58 points, an NCAA tournament record that still stands today.
John McPhee's
A Sense of Where You Are (1965) is a book-length profile of Bradley at
age 21.
Bradley graduated with honors and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship at
Worcester College, Oxford
University. Bradley also served as captain of the gold
medal-winning U.S. Olympic basketball team in 1964.
Professional basketball
After completing his studies at Oxford, and playing professional basketball
briefly in Italy for Olimpia Milano (1965/66 season),
where he won a European Champions Cup (the most important trophy for European teams), Bradley
returned to the U.S. to join the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association. On the court, Bradley struggled his rookie year before
coming into his own in his second season. During that season, he was moved from the guard position to his more natural forward
position. In 1969–70, he helped the Knicks win their first NBA championship, followed by a second in 1972–73. The second
championship season was Bradley’s best and he made his only All-Star Game appearance that year. Retiring from basketball in 1977,
he was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.
In 1984 the Knicks retired his number 24 jersey.
In the NBA, Bradley was not the major scoring threat he had been in college. Over ten years playing small forward for the Knicks, "Dollar Bill," as he was nicknamed, scored a total of 9,217 points for an
average of 12.4 points per game, with his seasonal best being 16.1 points per game.
During his time in the NBA, 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. making contacts in Democratic circles. In 1976, Bill also became an
author, with Life on the Run, which chronicled his experiences in the NBA and the people he met along the way.
U.S. Senate
Bradley had harbored political ambitions for years, and in 1978 decided to run for
United States Senate in New Jersey, for a seat
held by liberal Republican and four-term incumbent Clifford P. Case. Case lost his
primary to anti-tax conservative Jeff Bell, and Bradley won the seat in the general election with
55% of the vote.
In the Senate, Bradley acquired a reputation for being somewhat aloof and was thought of as a "policy wonk," specializing in complex reform initiatives. The best known of these was the 1986 overhaul of the federal tax code, which reduced the tax rate schedule to just two brackets, 15% and 28%, and
eliminated many kinds of deductions. Although he was a vocal supporter of various left-wing causes and political reform, he
sometimes broke ranks with his party to support the Reagan administration (initially
supporting, for instance, Reagan's policy of aiding the Contras in Nicaragua).
Some significant domestic policy initiatives that Bradley led or was associated with included: reform of child support
enforcement; legislation concerning lead-related children's health problems; the Earned Income Tax Credit; campaign finance reform; and federal budget reform to reduce the
deficit, which included, in 1981, supporting President Reagan's spending cuts but opposing
his parallel tax cut package, one of only three senators to take this position.
Bradley was re-elected in 1984 with 64% of the vote, and he still retained popularity in New
Jersey from his Knicks days and from practices such as his annual Labor Day
talk-to-citizens stroll along Jersey Shore beaches. Then a controversy over a state
income tax increase—on which he refused to take a position—turned his once-obscure rival for
Senate in 1990, Christine Todd Whitman, into a viable candidate. Bradley won by a
very small margin. In 1996 he opted not to run for re-election, publicly declaring American
politics "broken."
Presidential candidate
Bradley ran in the 2000 primaries, opposing incumbent
Vice President Al Gore for his
party's nomination. Bradley campaigned as the liberal alternative to
Gore, taking positions to the left of Gore on a number of issues, including universal
health care, gun control, and campaign
finance reform.
On the issue of taxes, Bradley trumpeted his sponsorship of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which had significantly cut tax rates,
while simultaneously abolishing dozens of loopholes. He voiced his belief that the best
possible tax code would be one with low rates and no loopholes, but he refused to rule out the idea of raising taxes to pay for
his health care program.
On public education, Bradley reversed his previous support of school vouchers, declaring them to be a failure. He proposed to make over $2 billion in block grants available to each state every year to be used for education. He further promised to bring
60,000 new teachers into the education system annually by offering college scholarships to anyone who agreed to become a teacher after graduating.
Bradley also made child poverty a significant issue in his campaign. Having voted
against the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Act, better known as the "Welfare Reform Act," which, he said, would result in even higher poverty levels, he promised to
repeal it as president. He also promised to address the minimum wage, expand the
Earned Income Tax Credit, allow single
parents on welfare to keep their child support payments, make the Dependent Care Tax Credit refundable, build support homes for pregnant teenagers, enroll 400,000 more children in Head Start,
and increase the availability of food stamps.
Although Gore was considered the favorite of the party, Bradley did receive a few high-profile endorsements. He was supported
by Senators Paul Wellstone, Bob Kerrey, and
Daniel Moynihan; former Senators John A.
Durkin and Adlai Stevenson III; Governor John Kitzhaber; former Governors Lowell P. Weicker, Jr.
(a former Republican), Mario Cuomo, Ray Mabus,
Brendan Byrne, Robert W. Scott, Neil Goldschmidt, Phil Noel, Tony
Earl, and Pat Lucey; Congressmen Luis Gutierrez and Jim McDermott; former Secretary of Labor
Robert Reich; former New York City Mayor
Ed Koch; former Federal Reserve Chairman
Paul Volcker; and Harvard Professor
Cornel West and even from Michael Jordan and best
friend Phil Jackson .
Bradley's campaign ultimately floundered, in part because it was overshadowed by Senator John
McCain's far more attention-gaining, but ultimately unsuccessful, campaign for the Republican nomination, and in part
because it was not able to match Gore's organization once the multiple-primary Super
Tuesdays began.
Recent years
Bradley has mostly stayed out of the limelight since his failed 2000 presidential primary campaign, working mainly as a
corporate consultant and investment banker. He is
chief outside advisor to McKinsey & Company's nonprofit practice. In 2005, he
joined the advisory board of British corporate investigation firm Hakluyt &
Company, and in 2004, he joined the Board of Directors of Meetup. Oxford University awarded Bradley an honorary Doctor of
Civil Law (DCL) in 2003, with the comment that he was "An outstandingly distinguished athlete, a weighty pillar of the Senate,
and still a powerful advocate of the weak." Currently, Bradley serves on the Board of Directors of Superprotonic, a solid
acid-based fuel cell technology development company.[2]
Despite some speculation about a second presidential run, he did not run in 2004 and has shown
no interest in returning to political office. In 2002, he reportedly turned down a last-minute
offer from New Jersey Democrats to replace Robert Torricelli on the ballot for his old
Senate seat (Frank Lautenberg accepted it instead). In January of 2004, Bradley endorsed Howard Dean for President in the 2004 Democratic
primaries, joining his old rival Al Gore in making that move — the endorsement, however, did not
have any apparent effect on Dean's unexpectedly unsuccessful campaign. Bradley's book, The New American Story, was released on March 27, 2007.
Trivia
- He appears as a character and vice President of the United States in Jeffrey Archer
book Shall We Tell the President?[citation needed]
- Bradley is an Eagle Scout and recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy
Scouts of America.[3][4]
- Bradley's basketball ability was enhanced by his unusually wide peripheral vision. While most people's horizontal field
covers 180 degrees, his covered 192 degrees. Vertically most people can see 47 degrees upward; Bradley could see 72
degrees.[5]
- Bradley is left-handed.
- Bradley appeared in the second episode of Saturday Night Live, giving a
trophy to guest host Paul Simon for winning a one-on-one contest with an Atlanta Hawks player in an earlier (pre-taped) segment of the program.
- Bradley spoke at Groton School's Prize Day in 2006.[6]
- During his high school years, Bradley maintained a maniacal practice schedule. 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."[7]
- Bradley is a close friend of NBA Coach Phil Jackson, they met when they were traveling
roommates playing for the New York Knickerbockers together. In 2000,
Jackson was a vocal supporter of Bradley's run for the presidency, often displaying his campaign button in public. In the 2007
Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Bradley accompanied Jackson who was
one of the inductees of that year.
-U.T.A lied and said he was a Maverick
Footnotes
See also
Further reading
- Bradley, Bill The New American Story (Random House, 2007) ISBN 978-1-40006-507-3
- Bradley, Bill The Journey from Here (Artisan, 2000) ISBN 1-57965-165-8
- Bradley, Bill Values of the Game (Artisan, 1998) ISBN 1-57965-116-X
- Bradley, Bill Time Present, Time Past: A Memoir (Diane Pub Co, 1996) ISBN 0-7881-5778-7
- Bradley, Bill Life on the Run (Bantam Books, 1977) ISBN 0-553-11055-1
- McPhee, John A Sense of Where You Are: Bill Bradley at Princeton (Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 1965) ISBN 0-374-51485-2
External links
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