BILL BRADLEY
Name: William Warren Bradley
Born: 28 July 1943 Crystal City, Missouri
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.
Bradley is an Eagle Scout and recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award
from the Boy Scouts of America. 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. He is left-handed.
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."
Bradley is a close friend of NBA Coach Phil Jackson, since they were traveling
roommates playing for the New York Knicks together. In 2000, Jackson was a vocal
supporter of Bradley's run for the presidency and often wore his campaign button
in public. In the 2007 Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Bradley
accompanied Jackson who was one of the inductees that year.
Bradley was born in Crystal City, Missouri to Warren Bradley, a banker, and
Susie Crowe. Bradley 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. With stellar academic
credentials as well, he received 75 college scholarship offers.
The 6' 5" (1.96 m) Bradley chose Princeton University, even though Ivy League
colleges could not offer athletic scholarships, after backing out of a
commitment to Duke University. At Princeton, under coach Butch van Breda Kolff,
Bradley was a three-time All-American and the 1965 National Player of the Year.
In each of Bradley's varsity seasons, the Tigers captured the Ivy League
championship. During his sophomore season, Bradley averaged 27.3 points and 12.2
rebounds a game while sinking 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 tournament 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.
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, as captain, he led Princeton to its highest national
basketball ranking ever. The Tigers placed third behind UCLA and Michigan in the
NCAA tournament, by virtue of an 118-82 victory over Wichita State in the semi-final
consolation game. In that game, Bradley scored 58 points. Only one other player
has scored more in a tournament game. Notre Dame's Austin Carr scored 61 points
in 1970 in a first round victory over Ohio.
John McPhee's A Sense of Where You Are (1965) is a paean to Bradley's Princeton
playing years. It was Pulitzer prize winner John McPhee's first book.
Bradley graduated with honors and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship at Worcester
College, University of Oxford. Bradley also served as captain of the gold medal-winning
U.S. Olympic basketball team in 1964. Bradley's remarkable tenure at Princeton
was the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winning author John McPhee's first book, A
Sense of Where You Are.
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 in his rookie year before coming into his own in
his second season, when he was moved from the guard position to his more natural
forward slot. 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 as a pro, 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 at 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 best season being 16.1 points per game.
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., where
he made contacts in Democratic circles. In 1976, Bradley also became an author,
with Life on the Run, which chronicled his experiences in the NBA and the people
he met along the way.
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 contest 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. In 1988,
there was speculation that he might seek the Democratic nomination for President,
and he polled well in early primary states, but he eventually decided not to run.
In 1990, a controversy over a state income tax increase—on which he refused to
take a position—turned his once-obscure rival for the Senate, Christine Todd
Whitman, into a viable candidate. Bradley won by only a slim margin. In 1996, he
opted not to run for re-election, publicly declaring American politics "broken."
Bradley ran in the 2000 presidential 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 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 a failure. He proposed to make over $2 billion in block grants
available to each state every year 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 party favorite, Bradley did receive several
high-profile endorsements. He was supported by Senators Paul Wellstone, Bob
Kerrey, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan; former Senators John A. Durkin and Adlai
Stevenson III; Governor John Kitzhaber; former Governors Lowell Weicker (a
former Republican), Mario Cuomo, Tony Earl, Ray Mabus, Brendan Byrne, Robert W.
Scott, Neil Goldschmidt, Philip W. Noel, Kenneth M. Curtis, and Patrick Lucey;
Congresspeople George Miller, Bill Lipinski, Pete Stark, Jerrold Nadler, Luis
Gutiérrez, Anna Eshoo, Jim McDermott, and Diana DeGette; former Congresspeople
Jim McNulty, Mary Rose Oakar, Michael J. Harrington, Andy Jacobs, and David
Skaggs; former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich; former New York City Mayor Ed
Koch; former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker; filmmaker Spike Lee; San
Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano; Seattle Mayor Paul Schell; Harvard Professor
Cornel West; feminist icon Betty Friedan; former Watergate Special Prosecutor
Archibald Cox; and basketball stars Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson.
Bradley's campaign intially had strong prospects, due to high-profile
endorsements and as his fundraising efforts gave him a deep war chest. However,
it floundered, in part because it was overshadowed by Senator John McCain's far
more attention-gaining, but ultimately unsuccessful, campaign for the Republican
nomination; McCain had stolen Bradley's "thunder" on several occasions. Bradley
was much embarrassed by his two to one defeat in the Iowa caucus, despite
spending heavily there, as the unions pledged their support for Gore. He then
lost the New Hampshire primary 53-47%. Bradley finished a distant second during
each of the primaries on Super Tuesday.
Name: William Warren Bradley
Born: 28 July 1943 Crystal City, Missouri
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.
Bradley is an Eagle Scout and recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award
from the Boy Scouts of America. 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. He is left-handed.
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."
Bradley is a close friend of NBA Coach Phil Jackson, since they were traveling
roommates playing for the New York Knicks together. In 2000, Jackson was a vocal
supporter of Bradley's run for the presidency and often wore his campaign button
in public. In the 2007 Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Bradley
accompanied Jackson who was one of the inductees that year.
Bradley was born in Crystal City, Missouri to Warren Bradley, a banker, and
Susie Crowe. Bradley 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. With stellar academic
credentials as well, he received 75 college scholarship offers.
The 6' 5" (1.96 m) Bradley chose Princeton University, even though Ivy League
colleges could not offer athletic scholarships, after backing out of a
commitment to Duke University. At Princeton, under coach Butch van Breda Kolff,
Bradley was a three-time All-American and the 1965 National Player of the Year.
In each of Bradley's varsity seasons, the Tigers captured the Ivy League
championship. During his sophomore season, Bradley averaged 27.3 points and 12.2
rebounds a game while sinking 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 tournament 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.
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, as captain, he led Princeton to its highest national
basketball ranking ever. The Tigers placed third behind UCLA and Michigan in the
NCAA tournament, by virtue of an 118-82 victory over Wichita State in the semi-final
consolation game. In that game, Bradley scored 58 points. Only one other player
has scored more in a tournament game. Notre Dame's Austin Carr scored 61 points
in 1970 in a first round victory over Ohio.
John McPhee's A Sense of Where You Are (1965) is a paean to Bradley's Princeton
playing years. It was Pulitzer prize winner John McPhee's first book.
Bradley graduated with honors and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship at Worcester
College, University of Oxford. Bradley also served as captain of the gold medal-winning
U.S. Olympic basketball team in 1964. Bradley's remarkable tenure at Princeton
was the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winning author John McPhee's first book, A
Sense of Where You Are.
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 in his rookie year before coming into his own in
his second season, when he was moved from the guard position to his more natural
forward slot. 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 as a pro, 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 at 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 best season being 16.1 points per game.
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., where
he made contacts in Democratic circles. In 1976, Bradley also became an author,
with Life on the Run, which chronicled his experiences in the NBA and the people
he met along the way.
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 contest 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. In 1988,
there was speculation that he might seek the Democratic nomination for President,
and he polled well in early primary states, but he eventually decided not to run.
In 1990, a controversy over a state income tax increase—on which he refused to
take a position—turned his once-obscure rival for the Senate, Christine Todd
Whitman, into a viable candidate. Bradley won by only a slim margin. In 1996, he
opted not to run for re-election, publicly declaring American politics "broken."
Bradley ran in the 2000 presidential 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 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 a failure. He proposed to make over $2 billion in block grants
available to each state every year 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 party favorite, Bradley did receive several
high-profile endorsements. He was supported by Senators Paul Wellstone, Bob
Kerrey, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan; former Senators John A. Durkin and Adlai
Stevenson III; Governor John Kitzhaber; former Governors Lowell Weicker (a
former Republican), Mario Cuomo, Tony Earl, Ray Mabus, Brendan Byrne, Robert W.
Scott, Neil Goldschmidt, Philip W. Noel, Kenneth M. Curtis, and Patrick Lucey;
Congresspeople George Miller, Bill Lipinski, Pete Stark, Jerrold Nadler, Luis
Gutiérrez, Anna Eshoo, Jim McDermott, and Diana DeGette; former Congresspeople
Jim McNulty, Mary Rose Oakar, Michael J. Harrington, Andy Jacobs, and David
Skaggs; former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich; former New York City Mayor Ed
Koch; former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker; filmmaker Spike Lee; San
Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano; Seattle Mayor Paul Schell; Harvard Professor
Cornel West; feminist icon Betty Friedan; former Watergate Special Prosecutor
Archibald Cox; and basketball stars Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson.
Bradley's campaign intially had strong prospects, due to high-profile
endorsements and as his fundraising efforts gave him a deep war chest. However,
it floundered, in part because it was overshadowed by Senator John McCain's far
more attention-gaining, but ultimately unsuccessful, campaign for the Republican
nomination; McCain had stolen Bradley's "thunder" on several occasions. Bradley
was much embarrassed by his two to one defeat in the Iowa caucus, despite
spending heavily there, as the unions pledged their support for Gore. He then
lost the New Hampshire primary 53-47%. Bradley finished a distant second during
each of the primaries on Super Tuesday.