BILL BRADLEY - 101 Greats of European Basketball

Bill
Bradley
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Senator between
the hoops
The death in 2011 of Cesare Rubini, a great
legend in Italian sport, reminded me of
the first triumph of an Italian team in the
European Cup, the forerunner to today’s
EuroLeague. It happened in the 1965-66
season in Bologna, in what was the first
Final Four ever, although that format lasted only two
seasons at that time, not to be reinstated again until
1988.
The Final Four teams in 1966 were eventual champs
Simenthal Milano, Slavia Prague, CSKA Moscow and
AEK Athens. Rubini was the boss of the Milano team
that would win the title. In the semifinals, the Italian
team defeated CSKA by 68-57, and in the title game,
played on April 1, Milano stopped Prague by 77-72.
Duane “Skip” Thoren scored 21 points, Gabriele
Vianello 21, Sandro Riminucci 10, Gianfranco Pieri 4,
Massimo Masini 3, Giandomenico Ongaro 4 – and Bill
Bradley 14.
Bill Bradley... Without a doubt, he is one of the best
Americans to ever play in Europe, but his life and his
two careers, sports and politics, deserve a story of
their own. William Warren Bradley was born on July
28, 1943, in Crystal City, Missouri. In high school,
he was already a national-level star in basketball.
He scored 3,068 points and received scholarship
offers from 75 universities! At the beginning, he had
chosen legendary Duke University, but during the
summer of 1961, he broke his leg playing baseball.
Thinking about his future outside of basketball, he
finally chose Princeton, even refusing a scholarship
promised by Duke. Already in his first season as a
freshman, he scored more than 30 points per game
and made 57 free throws without a miss. As a sophomore,
he was already a starter on the team and in
1963 he made the all-American first team. Even then
there was word that Bradley was ready to play in the
NBA, but he wanted his degree first. He earned his
spot on the U.S. national team for the 1964 Olympics
in Tokyo, where he would become the best player. In
the semifinals against Puerto Rico (62-42), he scored
16 points and in the title game against the USSR (73-
59) he scored 10. In his last season with Princeton,
as team captain, he took the team to the NCAA Final
Four. They lost in the semifinal but in the game for
third place Bradley scored 58 points and was named
MVP of the tourney.
Day-a-week champion
Bradley finished at Princeton with 2,503 points for a
30.2 average. In 1965, he won the James Sullivan prize,
the highest accolade in American amateur sports. He
was the first basketball player to ever win the award.
He was the most desired player for NBA teams and,
according to the rules of the time, as a territorial pick,
the New York Knicks selected him in the draft. But pro
basketball was not in Bradley’s plans just yet. He had
also won a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to attend
Oxford University in England for post-graduate studies.
And this is where Simmenthal Milano comes into the
story. The club offered Bradley a good economic deal
and also some terms that would be almost impossible
today. Bradley only had to play in the EuroLeague
games. He didn’t even practice regularly with the team,
101 greats of european basketball
Bill Bradley
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only from time to time if flight connections allowed
some extra time before the game. But it really looked
like Bradley didn’t need the sessions. In the games, no
one could notice any lack of integration with his team.
He was a scoring machine. For instance, against Racing
Malines in the quarterfinals group, he scored 43 points
in Belgium and 33 at home. His contribution to the first
Italian team to win the European club title was huge.
The captain of the Simmenthal team in 1966, Gianfranco
Pieri, remembers Bradley on the Olimpia Milano
official website:
Vladimir Stankovic
Rubini, the prophet
“I have vivid images of our first game,” Pieri writes.
“We were at the 1960 Olympics in Tokyo. Rubini wanted
to sign Bradley and he told me to go talk to him. We
talked for a while and after that, we exchanged a couple
gifts. Two years later we were teammates in Olimpia,
me as a captain and him as the star of the European
Cup. At that time he was studying in Oxford and every
Tuesday he traveled to play with us.”
Rubini, the prophet, had said: “He is a phenom. He
plays like God, and on the side, he studies to become
president of the United States.”
A Bradley presidency almost happened, in fact,
but that was many years later. Bill Bradley had a brilliant
career as a professional player. After serving six
months in the US Air Force, he finally signed for the
New York Knicks in December of 1967. In his third year,
1969-70, the Knicks won their first NBA championship
and repeated again in 1972-73, when Bradley took part
in his only all-star game. It was his best season, as he
averaged 16.1 points and 3.4 assists. When he retired
in 1977, he left behind 742 games and 9,217 points, a
12.4-point average.
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Second career
While he was a pro player, Bradley also was also getting
ready for a second career, in politics. He excelled as
a social worker. He taught in Harlem, talked a lot with
businessmen, students, politicians and the press. The
basketball community honored him in the highest manner
possible by inducting him into the Hall of Fame in
1982. The Knicks also retired his jersey with number 24
in 1984. The only other players so honored before him
were Willis Reed, Walt Frazier and Dave DeBusschere.
His political career took place with the Democrat
Party but, as an independent thinker, he once broke
that discipline and backed a Republican president,
Ronald Reagan, on certain issues. When he retired as a
player in 1977, he ran for the U.S. Senate in New Jersey.
He beat his rival, conservative Jeffrey Bell, with the 56%
of the vote. In 1984, he repeated in the spot with 65% of
the vote and he was proposed for the presidential election,
but he declined. Later, after retiring from the Senate,
he decided to run for the Democratic nomination
for president in 2000, against Al Gore, who was then
the vice president of the United States. In March of that
same year, seeing that Gore had more support inside
the party, he decided to step out of the race. In January
of 2008, Bradley gave public support to Barack Obama.
To this day, Bradley is considered a progressive among
American thinkers. And in Italy, the Olimpia Milano fans
still remember him with a special kind of love for bringing
them Italy’s first European basketball trophy.
Bill Bradley, a senator and a Lord of the Rims.
Bill Bradley
101 greats of european basketball
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