Bill Bradley

An active Boy Scout, he became an Eagle Scout and member of the Order of the Arrow.<br /><br /> Bradley's wealthy background made his exceptional athletic ability especially unusual. Bradley began playing basketball at the age of nine. He 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. He received 75 college scholarship offers, although he applied to only five schools and only scored a 485 out of 800 on the Verbal portion of the SAT, which—despite being likely in the top third of all test takers that year—normally would have caused selective schools like Princeton University to reject him.<br /><br /> Bradley's basketball ability benefited from his height—5'9" in the 7th grade, 6'1" in the 8th grade, and his adult size of 6'5" by the age of 15—and unusually wide peripheral vision, which he worked to improve by focusing on faraway objects while walking. During his high school years, Bradley maintained a rigorous practice schedule, a habit he carried through college. 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." Read Less

The coach of the St. Louis Hawks believed he was ready to play professional basketball. The AP and United Press International polls both put Bradley on the second team, establishing him as the top sophomore player in the country; Bradley also hit .316 as a first baseman for the baseball team. The following year The Sporting News again named him to its All-American team as its only junior, and as its player of the year. Read Less

In 1984, the Knicks retired his number 24 jersey; he was the fourth player so honored by the Knicks, after Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, and DeBusschere.<br /><br /> Politics was a frequent subject of discussion in the Bradley household, and some of his relatives held local and county political offices. He 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 Bradley would be Governor of Missouri, or President, by 40. He spent his time at Oxford focusing on European political and economic history. In 1978, he 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. Read Less