Bill Bradley
William Warren Bradley ( born July 28, 1943 in Crystal City, Jefferson County, Missouri ) is an American politician and former basketball player. For the Democratic Party, he was from 1979 to 1997 as the representative of the State of New Jersey in the U.S. Senate. As a basketball player he was active 1967-1977 in the U.S. professional league NBA for the New York Knicks. Bradley is 1,96 m tall and played on the position of small forward.
An outstanding high school athlete Bradley got about 70 offers for sports scholarships, including from Kentucky's Adolph Rupp. Since Bradley but put more emphasis on his education as to sports, he decided in 1961 to study at Princeton University, at its own expense. As an outstanding player in the Ivy League Bradley was elected three times to the All-American team ( '63 to '65 ) and once for Player of the Year (1965). In '64 he won the Olympic gold medal with Team USA.
In the Draft 1965 voted him the New York Knicks, but Bradley decided to not immediately available for a career as a professional athlete. As the winner of a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University he studied until 1967 in England. In the meantime, he played basketball with Olimpia Milano in Italy. In 1967, he finally joined the NBA. As an important part of an extraordinary Knicks teams with Willis Reed, Walt Frazier and Dave DeBusschere 1970 he won the NBA championship, and another in 1973.
He finished his basketball career in 1977 after ten years with the Knicks. He decided on a career in politics and in 1979, U.S. Senator for the state of New Jersey, where he stayed until 1997. As a popular politician, he was considered as a possible 1988 presidential candidate, but decided only in 2000 for a run and lost in the primaries against Vice President Al Gore.
William 'Bill' Bradley was the beginning of 2008 to a circle of 105 basketball players who were nominated by the Euro League Basketball and / or basketball stakeholders to fifty major personalities of the sport of basketball in Europe in the period 1958-2008 active, determined and subsequently in May to honor in 2008 in Madrid (Spain). All nominated players have played a particularly prominent role in the European Cup competitions of FIBA Europe and the Euro League basketball and belonged respectively to the most prominent ' stars' of their national league teams.