Bill Bradley
William Warren "Bill" Bradley (born July 28, 1943) is an American former professional basketball player who later became a well-known U.S. Senator and presidential candidate.
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Basketball
A native of Crystal City, Missouri and the son of Warren Bradley and Susie Bradley, Bill Bradley was a Rhodes Scholar and basketball player at Princeton University. He served as captain of the US Olympic basketball team in 1964 and received the James E. Sullivan Award, presented to the United States' top amateur athlete, in 1965.
After graduating from Princeton and playing professional basketball briefly in Italy, he was recruited by the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association. In ten years playing forward for the Knicks, "Dollar Bill," as he was known, scored a total of 9,217 points and won two NBA championships, in 1970 and 1973. Bradley retired from basketball in 1977. In 1982, he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame, and in 1984 the Knicks retired his number 24 jersey.
Politics
In 1978, Bradley was elected to the United States Senate from New Jersey. He served in the Senate until his retirement in 1996, serving on the Finance Committee, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the Special Committee on Aging, and the Select Committee on Intelligence.
Bradley ran for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2000, but lost to Vice President Al Gore. On January 6, 2004, Bradley joined Gore in endorsing Howard Dean for President in 2004. Other than that he has kept a low profile and shown no obvious interest in returning as a future candidate for President.
Further reading
- A Sense of Where You Are by John McPhee
- Life on the Run by Bill Bradley
External links
- Bill Bradley at the Basketball Hall of Fame (http://www.hoophall.com/halloffamers/Bradley.htm)
- The Life of Bill Bradley (washingtonpost.com) (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/news/postseries/lifeofbradley/)
Categories: Basketball players | United States Senators | 1943 births