Bill Bradley

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Bill Bradley (William Warren Bradley), 1943–, American athlete and politician, b. Crystal City, Mo. He first gained wide attention as an All-America basketball player at Princeton. Graduating in 1965, he attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and in 1967–77 starred for the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association. In 1979 he became a U.S. senator from New Jersey. Before retiring from the Senate in 1997, he gained a reputation as a reform-minded Democrat, influential especially on environmental, labor, and income-tax issues. Often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, Bradley became (1999) a candidate for the 2000 Democratic presidential nomination, but he was defeated in the primaries by Al Gore . Bradley wrote about his visions for America's future in The Journey from Here (2000) and The New American Story (2007).

Bibliography: See his account of his Knicks years, Life on the Run (1976), and his memoir, Time Present, Time Past (1996).