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• William Bill Bradley is a former U.S. Senator, presidential candidate, hall of fame basketball player, Rhodes scholar & author.

• Fast Facts

  1. Born in: Crystal City, Missouri
  2. Parents: Warren Bradley and Susie Crowe
  3. Spouse: Ernestine Bradley
  4. Recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America
  5. First basketball player chosen as winner of the James E. Sullivan Award
  6. Captain of the gold-medal-winning 1964 U.S. Olympic basketball team

• Basketball

  Bradley first made his name as an athlete at Crystal City High School, where he was named an All-American twice. He received over 75 offers for scholarships, and had initially considered Duke before finally settling on Princeton University. There, he was named All-American three times, as well as the 1965 National Player of the Year. While playing for Princeton, he scored 2,503 total points. Bradley's career in Princeton was the subject of the Pulitzer Prize-winning John McPhee book A Sense of Where You Are.

  After graduation, Bradley played in the NBA for the New York Knicks. He played small forward for the Knicks for a decade before retiring from basketball in 1977.

• Politics

  In 1978, Bradley was elected to the U.S. Senate representing the state of New Jersey as a Democrat. In 1996, frustrated with the system and referring to American politics as "broken," he declined to run for re-election.

  In 2000, Bradley ran in the presidential primary against then-Vice President Al Gore, focusing much of his campaign on the issues of poverty and campaign finance reform. He lost the first few major votes of the campaign - in the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire Primary - by a significant margin, and dropped out of the race after Super Tuesday.

  In 2008, Bradley announced that he was supporting Barack Obama for President.

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