74 Facts About Bill Bradley

William Warren Bradley was born on July 28,1943 and is an American politician and former professional basketball player.

Bill Bradley was born and raised in Crystal City, Missouri, a small town 45 miles south of St Louis.

Bill Bradley did well academically and was an all-county and all-state basketball player in high school.

Bill Bradley was offered 75 college scholarships, but declined them all to attend Princeton University.

Bill Bradley won a gold medal as a member of the 1964 Olympic basketball team and was the Most Outstanding Player of the 1965 NCAA Tournament, when Princeton finished third.

Bill Bradley spent his entire ten-year professional basketball career playing for the Knicks, winning NBA titles in 1970 and 1973.

Bill Bradley was re-elected in 1984 and 1990, left the Senate in 1997, and was an unsuccessful candidate for the 2000 Democratic presidential nomination.

Bill Bradley is the author of seven non-fiction books, most recently We Can All Do Better, and hosts a weekly radio show, American Voices, on Sirius Satellite Radio.

Bill Bradley is a member of the ReFormers Caucus of Issue One.

Bill Bradley is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

In 2008 Bill Bradley was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.

Bill Bradley was born on July 28,1943, in Crystal City, Missouri, the only child of Warren, who despite leaving high school after a year had become a bank president, and Susan "Susie" Crowe, a teacher and former high school basketball player.

Bill Bradley was a star at Crystal City High School, where he scored 3,068 points in his scholastic career, was twice named All-American, and was elected to the Missouri Association of Student Councils.

Bill Bradley was considered to be the top high school basketball player in the country.

Bill Bradley initially chose to attend Duke 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, Bill Bradley decided to enroll at Princeton due to its record in preparing students for government or United States Foreign Service work.

Bill Bradley had been awarded a scholarship at Duke, but not at Princeton; the Ivy League does not allow its members to award athletic scholarships, and he was disqualified from receiving financial aid because of his family's wealth.

Bill Bradley was so superior to the rest of the freshman team that coach Eddie Donovan chose lineups by saying "You, you, you, you, and Bradley".

Bill Bradley averaged more than 30 points per game for the freshman team, at one point making 57 consecutive free throws, breaking a record set by a member of the NBA's Syracuse Nationals.

At the Olympic basketball trials in April 1964, Bill Bradley played guard instead of his usual forward position but was still a top performer.

Bill Bradley was one of three chosen unanimously for the Olympic team, the youngest chosen, and the only undergraduate.

In total, Bill Bradley scored 2,503 points at Princeton, averaging 30.2 points per game.

Bill Bradley 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.

Bill Bradley holds a number of Ivy League career records, including total and average points, and free throws made and attempted.

Bill Bradley had three to four hours of classes and four hours of basketball practice daily, studied an average of seven hours each weekday, and up to 24 more hours each weekend, frequently spoke for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes around the country, and taught Sunday school at the local Presbyterian Church.

Bill Bradley took losses personally, outraged when other freshman players laughed and joked after a loss.

All 15 Princeton University eating clubs asked him to join; Bill Bradley chose Cottage Club.

In 1965, Bill Bradley received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

Bill Bradley dropped out of Oxford in April 1967, two months before graduation, to enter the Air Force Reserves.

Bill Bradley was placed in the backcourt, although he had spent his high school and college careers as a forward.

Bill Bradley had an intense rivalry with Jack Marin, who played chiefly with the Baltimore Bullets, to the point of Bill Bradley's "shrieking incoherently" at Marin on one occasion, and their exchanging slaps on others.

Bill Bradley worked as an assistant to the director of the Office of Economic Opportunity in Washington, DC, and as a teacher in the street academies of Harlem.

Bill Bradley wrote that he was uncomfortable using his celebrity status to earn extra money endorsing products as other players did.

Bill Bradley is one of only two players, along with Manu Ginobili, to have won a EuroLeague title, an NBA championship, and an Olympic gold medal.

Bill Bradley majored in history at Princeton and was present in the Senate chamber when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed.

Van Breda Kolff and many others who knew him predicted that Bill Bradley would be Governor of Missouri, or president, by 40.

Bill Bradley spent his time at Oxford focusing on European political and economic history.

In Life on the Run, Bill Bradley wrote that he had intended to only play in the NBA for four years before signing a second contract for four more.

In 1978 Bill Bradley 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.

Bill Bradley felt his time had been well-spent in "paying his dues".

Case lost the Republican primary to anti-tax conservative Jeffrey Bell, who, like Bill Bradley, was 34 years old as the campaign season began.

Domestic policy initiatives that Bill 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; a re-apportioning of California water rights; and federal budget reform to reduce the deficit, which included, in 1981, supporting Reagan's spending cuts but opposing his parallel tax cut package, one of only three senators to take this position.

Bill Bradley sponsored the Freedom Support Act, an exchange program between the republics of the former Soviet Union and the United States.

In 1987, Bradley re-introduced legislation that would return 1.3 million acres of land in the Black Hills of South Dakota to the Sioux tribe that had been illegally seized by President Ulysses S Grant under the threat of starvation of the tribe in 1877.

Bill Bradley was criticized for neglecting constituent services while in office.

Bill Bradley ran in the 2000 presidential primaries, opposing incumbent Vice President Al Gore for his party's nomination.

Bill 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.

Bill Bradley 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, calling the idea of such a pledge "dishonest".

On public education, Bradley proposed to make over $2 billion in block grants available to each state every year.

Bill Bradley further promised to bring 60,000 new teachers into the education system in hard-to-staff areas over ten years by offering college scholarships to anyone who agreed to become a teacher after graduating; Gore offered a similar proposal.

Bill Bradley made child poverty a significant issue in his campaign.

Bill Bradley 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.

Jackson was a vocal supporter of Bill Bradley's run for the presidency and often wore his campaign button in public.

Jackson announced his acceptance of the position of head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers while Bill Bradley was campaigning in California in 1999, and he was a "regular draw on the Bill Bradley money trail" during the campaign.

Bill Bradley later called it a "great honor" to be the presenter when Jackson was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007.

Bill 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.

Bill Bradley finished a distant second during each of the primaries on Super Tuesday.

On March 9,2000, after failing to win any of the first 20 primaries and caucuses in the election process, Bill Bradley withdrew his campaign and endorsed Gore; he ruled out the idea of running as the vice-presidential candidate and did not answer questions about possible future runs for the presidency.

Bill Bradley said that he would continue to speak out regarding his brand of politics, calling for campaign finance reform, gun control, and increased health care insurance.

Later in 2000, Bill Bradley was offered the chairmanship of the United States Olympic Committee, which he turned down.

In September 2002, Bill Bradley turned down a request from New Jersey Democrats to replace Robert Torricelli on the ballot for his old Senate seat, which another former senator, Frank Lautenberg, accepted.

In 2007 Bill Bradley was awarded the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award.

In January 2008, Bill Bradley announced that he was supporting Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary.

Bill Bradley campaigned for Obama and appeared on political news shows as a surrogate.

Bill Bradley's name was mentioned as a possible replacement for Tom Daschle as nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Obama administration after Daschle withdrew from consideration; the position went to Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius.

Bill Bradley has occasionally been involved in political matters, most recently consulting the Senate Finance Committee on tax reform along with former colleague Bob Packwood.

Bill Bradley has worked as a corporate consultant and investment banker.

Bill Bradley is a senior advisor to the private equity firm Catterton Partners.

Bill Bradley is the Chair of the Advisory Council for Acumen Fund, a non-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty.

Bill Bradley is a co-chair for the advisory board of Issue One, a non-profit whose goal is to reduce the influence of money in American politics.

Bill Bradley is a member of the board of directors of the American Committee on East-West Accord.

Bill Bradley created an autobiographical one-man show, Rolling Along, which was filmed before a live audience in a New York theater in 2022.

Bill Bradley married Ernestine Schlant, a German-born professor of comparative literature, in 1974.

Bill Bradley has a daughter, Stephanie, from a previous marriage, and they have one daughter, Theresa Anne.