Spiritual Quote of the Day (Bill Bradley, on the Moral Questions That Politics Avoids)

“How can a people that wages war on nature reflect God? How can a society with grating poverty amidst great wealth remain just? What is it that guides one through life? What is it that one yearns and strives for? Politics shrinks from even acknowledging these basic questions. It is easier to give a response based on a poll than one that flows from your heart.”—Former U.S. Senator from New Jersey, Presidential candidate, and New York Knicks basketball player Bill Bradley, Time Present, Time Past: A Memoir (1996)

Quote of the Day (Bill Bradley, on Rival John Havlicek, ‘Unselfish and Loyal’)

“For ten years, John Havlicek was my toughest opponent in the biggest rivalry in the league. Night after night he was the epitome of constant motion. He only needed half a step to beat me, which he usually did. He was the quintessential Celtic—unselfish and loyal—and through the players’ union he helped make the game more just by ending the reserve clause. The only thing he loved more than the game was his family. He’ll always be with them."—Bill Bradley, paying tribute to fellow Basketball Hall of Famer John Havlicek (1940-2019), quoted in Matt Dollinger, “NBA Legends Mourn The Death of John Havlicek,” Sports Illustrated, Apr. 28, 2019

This Day in NBA History (DeBusschere Landed in Knick of Time)

Dec. 19, 1968—With Christmas only days away, New York Knick General Manager Eddie Donovan gave Coach Red Holzman an early present for the holidays: the player who would form the missing piece of the puzzle he needed to secure two league championships. 

The team, even with several fine players, had inexplicably started to sputter when Donovan traded center Walt Bellamy and point guard Howard Komives in exchange for a player much-coveted by much of the rest of the league: rugged forward Dave DeBusschere. 

Standing 6 feet, 6 inches and weighing 225 pounds, DeBusschere had already made his mark in his early twenties by playing two professional sports (the second was baseball, in his time as a pitcher for the Chicago White Sox) and serving as player-coach for the Pistons. 

His years with the Knicks would, surprisingly enough, only constitute half of his dozen years in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Yet New York was where he secured the reputation that would lead to his uniform being retired by the Knicks and with DeBusschere himself enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

No other trade in Knick history would have such a long-lasting, positive influence on the team. Since 1963, Donovan had acquired a raft of talented young players in Willis Reed, Bill Bradley, Walt Frazier, Cazzie Russell and Phil Jackson. But until DeBusschere came along, a team that should have contended was consistently out of sync. 

Holzman's offensive credo was simple to state but harder to apply without the right players: "See the ball, hit the open man." Komives had not only proven inadequate to that task, but had annoyed Russell by often overlooking him on court, even when he was wide open, according to Bill Gutman's Tales from the 1969-1970 New York Knicks.

As for Bellamy, there was no doubting the skill of this former Rookie of the Year, but he was three years older than another natural center then playing out of position—Reed—and without the latter’s passing ability or leadership skills. 

While these factors made Bellamy and Komives expendable, DeBusschere brought a number of assets—some immediately visible, others only observable over the long term. He was already demonstrating that he could be an essential cog in the pressing defensive alignment that Holzman hoped to put into action. 

Invariably, he would be designated the player who would shadow and stop the opposing team’s offensive star. DeBusschere, Phoenix Suns dazzler Connie Hawkins once observed, "took away my first, second, third, and fourth offensive move." 

But he could also pass well—a prerequisite for “hitting the open man”—sneak behind picks for shots, and inspire teammates with his durability and fearless, all-stops-out physical style.

Had it simply involved acquiring a talented player, the swap’s impact would have been limited. After all, obtaining Bob McAdoo and Carmelo Anthony—among the most prolific scorers of their eras—did nothing to improve the Knicks’ standing.

Instead, the trade—while bringing aboard a tenacious rebounder and defender who could, when the occasion warranted, sink a well-timed jumper from the corner—was so important for the way it allowed other players to assume other, more natural roles, as detailed by sports journalist Pete Axthelm in The City Game:

*Willis Reed, a bit slow at power forward to stop fast smaller players, could use his bulk at his natural position—center—while using his feathery outside shot to lure the opposing center away from the basket.

*Bill Bradley, who had been shuttling unsuccessfully between guard and forward, settled at small forward, where Madison Square Garden fans could see the deft shooting touch and court awareness that made him a star at Princeton.

*Walt Frazier, knowing that Reed and DeBusschere could cover for his mistakes, took more frequent gambles in stealing the ball, becoming one of the leading defensive stars of the National Basketball Association (NBA).

*Cazzie Russell learned how to make an instant impact as an offensive sparkplug.

*Dick Barnett, at shooting guard, found new life in his post-30 legs.

In short, DeBusschere changed the alchemy of the team. He would also exemplify its consistency and cohesiveness, as he himself put it after his retirement: "The key to our team was the willingness to sacrifice without expecting anything in return. Period.”

The forward’s impact was immediate: Not only did the team halt their losing streak, but it would go on to to the Eastern Division finals, which they lost to the Boston Celtics in six games. 

The following year, when I began to avidly follow them over the radio, was their season of glory, when they won their first NBA championship. DeBusschere would be essential to that success, averaging 16.1 points per game in the team’s 19 total playoff contests. He would prove equally essential in the team’s 1973 championship run.

Following his retirement in 1974, DeBusschere would become one of only two men to serve as general manager of two New York professional teams (George Weiss, with the Yankees and Mets, was the other executive); engineer the merger of the NBA with the American Basketball Association (in which he acted as the last commissioner of the league); and, in his four seasons as Knicks GM in the 1980s, lay the cornerstone for contention in the 1990s by drafting Georgetown All-American center Patrick Ewing as the overall #1 pick in the league.

DeBusschere’s indomitability on the court made his 2003 death by heart attack at age 62 all the more shocking and sad to fans like me. Few of us could identify with Frazier’s off-court flash, Bradley’s mixture of court smarts and intellectual brilliance, or Jackson’s counter-cultural instincts. 

But DeBusschere was the lunch-bucket hero, the guy who would shrug off a sharp elbow, a blow to the face, or an aching knee to get his work done, night after night, only to smile afterward with a beer in hand over a job well done.

(Accompanying photo of Dave DeBusschere taken from 1974 New York Knicks program.)

Quote of the Day (Bill Bradley, on the ‘Spiritual Concerns of American Citizens’)

“People are looking for a new story for their lives and for the nation’s life. In some cases, the spiritual concerns of American citizens have been too easily discounted. The so-called Christian right, a mainstay of the Republican coalition, has been exploited for the past couple of decades by economic conservatives, but it wants an America where morality isn’t derided but rather encouraged. The so-called Christian Left, for a generation more absorbed in the politics of foreign policy than in political action at home, wants a society more just in its distribution of goods and services. There is greater agreement between these two camps than has been admitted by the other. I sense that all across America, among people of all creeds, there is a search for something deeper than material well-being.” —Former Senator (and basketball legend) Bill Bradley, Time Present, Time Past: A Memoir (1996)

Quote of the Day (John McPhee, Paying Tribute to His Headmaster)

“[Deerfield Academy headmaster Frank] Boyden has the gift of authority. He looks fragile, his voice is uncommanding, but people do what he says. Without this touch, he would have lost the school on the first day he worked there. Of the seven boys who were in the academy when he took over in 1902, at least four were regarded by the populace with fear, and for a couple of years it had been the habit of Deerfield to cross the street when passing the academy….The boys were, on the average, a head taller and thirty pounds heavier than the headmaster. The first day went by without a crisis. Then, as the students were getting ready to leave, Boyden said, ‘Now we’re going to play football.’ Sports had not previously been a part of the program at the academy. Scrimmaging on the village common, the boys were amused at first, and interested in the novelty, but things suddenly deteriorated in a hail of four-letter words. With a sour look, the headmaster said, ‘Cut that out!’ That was all he said, and—inexplicably—it was all he had to say.”—John McPhee, The Headmaster: Frank L. Boyden of Deerfield (1966)

Today is the 80th birthday of prolific New Yorker contributor John McPhee (in the image accompanying this post). Far be it from me to argue with the deliberations of those who select Pulitzer Prize winners, but over the last several decades, as the Princeton, N.J. resident has concentrated increasingly—almost obsessively—on the physical world (e.g., Basin and Range), I have tended to avoid his work. 

(I blame The New Yorker, which, in the last years of the William Shawn era, became so musty that it allowed favored writers to muse, often at interminable length, on just about anything—see, for instance, E.J. Kahn Jr.’s Staffs of Life, a book that grew out of his multi-part series on grain.)

But in McPhee's early days, when he profiled real human beings, he gave an extraordinary vivid picture of their world. 

A Sense of Where You Are, for instance, remains, more than four decades after its appearance, the essential account for understanding why Bill Bradley made such a huge impression on the basketball world in college.

Likewise, The Headmaster masterfully describes, toward the end of his 66-year career at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, its benevolent despot, headmaster Frank Boyden. This piece benefits more than a little from intimate familiarity with its subject. (McPhee was a product of the school himself during Boyden’s long reign). 

If you want to know not just about the rise of one of this country’s major prep schools—more than that, what makes an institution-builder tick—then this is the book for you.

It’s astonishing to realize that, in his six decades with the school, Boyden—whose demeanor, according to McPhee, suggested “a small, grumpy Labrador”—not only kept no written rules but only expelled a half-dozen students altogether. 

Would that record be possible to maintain in today’s world of broken homes that damage young lives, the substance abuse to which teens are exposed—and litigators ready to pounce on the lack of any written record of school policies?

(By the way, film fans: the 1982 Diane Keaton-Albert Finney movie Shoot the Moon was based on a screenplay by Bo Goldman, a former Princeton classmate of McPhee’s. More than a decade after its premiere, McPhee’s ex-wife sued the filmmakers, alleging that the events onscreen depicted her marital strife as witnessed by Goldman while he was a guest of the couple. The case was settled out of court.)

This Day in Basketball History (Bradley Nets 2,000th Pt. Vs. Columbia)

January 15, 1965—Bill Bradley’s 41-point effort in Princeton University’s win over Columbia was seemingly uneventful compared with two games before and immediately after: his epic showdown against the Cazzie Russell-led Michigan just before the New Year (recounted in a prior post of mine) and his hot-and-cold game against Cornell the following night.

But the crowd at Morningside Heights that night got to see something special nonetheless: the 2,000th-point in the collegiate career of the future Basketball Hall of Famer and U.S. Senator from New Jersey.

New Yorker writer John McPhee’s fascinating if hagiographic account of the Princeton years of “Dollar Bill,” A Sense of Where You Are, treats the Columbia game in uncharacteristically desultory fashion, noting merely that my alma mater “went down without incident.” I gather that the score was not only not especially close, but that the outcome was never even in doubt.

The squad that Bradley and coach Butch van Breda Kolff faced that night was under the watchful eye of Jack Rohan, the most successful coach in the Lions’ history.

Rohan’s recruiting efforts had not fully borne fruit yet—that would have to wait until the 1967-68 team, led by Jim McMillan, which reeled off 23 wins against five losses, winning the Ivy League championship—but his team could still pull off surprises.

One of these was recounted in a post on Columbia’s Web site by Mike Griffin, a 1965 grad. In January 1964, a capacity crowd at University Hall got the best of both worlds: a typically stellar Bradley performance (36 points) and a thrilling 69-66 victory for the Lions.

Any hopes that history would repeat itself on Morningside Heights—that Princeton, playing away from home, at the end of a period of intense cramming for exams, would play flatfooted--fell by the wayside. When Bradley notched the 2,000th point of his career, play was stopped to present him with the ball. Until that point, only 16 other players in college basketball history had gained as many points.

What happened the next 24 hours proved far more eventful, as the Princeton squad left immediately for Ithaca, N.Y., by bus—in a blizzard. Perhaps that, along with a 20-minute delay of the game against Cornell, unsettled Bradley, because in the first half he was ice-cold: 10 points, but only two field goals made out of seventeen attempted.

In the second half, Bradley ignited, pouring in 30 points and helping to erase the 16-point deficit that the Tigers faced with 14 minutes to go. But Cornell won the game by a point with a jump shot in the closing seconds. That would be Princeton’s only Ivy League loss that magical season.

In the decade to come, Columbia fans who rooted for the home team in professional basketball would be glad to see Bradley on their side for a change. Later that year, he would be drafted by the New York Knickerbockers, where he became an integral part of two championship teams that put into beautiful practice coach Red Holtzman’s philosophy: defense, moving without the ball, and hitting the open man.

This Day in Basketball History (Future Knicks Bradley, Russell Meet in Holiday Tournament)

December 30, 1964—In a performance acclaimed one of the "All-Time Top 10 College Basketball Moments at Madison Square Garden," Princeton’s Bill Bradley scored 41 points, pulled down nine rebounds, and held the player he was guarding to a single point, hearing the first cheers in the New York arena where he’d make his professional home for 10 years. 

But his effort in the Holiday Festival Tournament semi-final against top-ranked Michigan came to naught. His fifth foul, coming with Princeton 12 points up with less than five minutes to play against their heavily favored opponents, allowed the Wolverines—featuring Bradley’s future Knick teammate Cazzie Russell —to overtake the Tigers and win, 80-78.

For the general public, the performance by the Ivy League senior confirmed that he was indeed the real thing. The crowd that day gave him a three-minute standing ovation after he was forced to leave the game.

For Bradley, believe it or not, it may have meant more. I don’t mean simply telling him he could excel at the fabled Garden, a sports venue he had never played before. No, I think it further instilled two bits of knowledge that would serve him in good stead throughout his subsequent career as athlete and politician:

1) Ferocious preparation and self-discipline could help him master any realm in which he decided to enter; and

2) Despite his best efforts, he might still lose, and he should not treat the defeat as the end of the world but learn what he could from it and move on.

Or, as he told audiences at the time: “You’ve got to face that you’re going to lose. Losses are part of every season, and part of life. The question is, can you adjust? It is important that you don’t get caught up in your own little defeats.”

In cold print, that philosophy sounds almost like a truism. Try telling that to certain politicians, though.

That profession depends, from election to election, on personal validation, and a number of Presidential aspirants, at one time or another in their careers, have experienced defeats at the polls as a kind of second death. 

Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore all experienced these as soul-crushing, and the losses left them, in many cases, smaller, even damaged, men.

In contrast, Bradley comes across as something like the embodiment of Rudyard Kipling’s “If”—i.e., one of those who can “meet with triumph and disaster/And treat those two imposters just the same.”

The most striking instance of this came when he lost the 2000 Presidential nomination to Al Gore. Once a series of losses in the primaries forced him out, he moved on with the next stage of his life, without walking around like a duck struck on the head with a paddle, without making up enemies’ lists, and without biting his lips, turning red-faced, or striking back at opponents in autobiographies.

Bradley started on two Knick teams that won NBA champions, but recalling the ones that got away—without fixating on it—kept his ego in check and his sanity intact.

In the 1990s, I saw him asked in a TV interview about John Starks’ disastrous 2-for-18 shooting drought in Game 7 of the 1994 championship series against the Houston Rockets. Bradley was asked: Would Starks ever be able to live this down?

Sure, Bradley said, though the excitable Knick guard would have to get used to memories of it. He recalled his own experience in 1971, when the Knicks were unable to repeat as champions because he missed a buzzer jumper in the deciding game of the Eastern Conference finals against the Baltimore Bullets. He could still hear from New York cabbies, years later, “Ya bum, how could you miss that shot?”

If you’d like to get a sense of what Bradley was like in his college years, start with New Yorker writer John McPhee’s A Sense of Where You Are. It’s a fascinating book—for its place in the author's career, for the light it sheds on a great American story, and for its treatment of the major issue changing American society—and, shortly, Bradley’s game—at the time: race.

Not long after his 1977 bestseller about Alaska, Coming Into the Country, McPhee began to write, in almost obsessive fashion, about inanimate objects rather than people (e.g., Basin and Range, The Control of Nature). 

This might have been the nadir of The New Yorker (not counting when Tina Brown asked Rosie O’Donnell to serve as a “guest editor”), in the period when editor William Shawn made a specialty of the legendary “50,000-word piece on zinc” (perhaps best illustrated by E.J. Kahn’s multi-part series on “The Staffs of Life.”)

But the Bradley profile, more than a decade earlier, showed, despite its sometimes overly worshipful tone, just how good McPhee could be. It’s a great foreshadowing of the athlete-politician’s later career, and filled with all kinds of interesting details (e.g., how Bradley scrubbed his hands before games to eliminate excess perspiration and oil, increasing friction that would enable him to grip the ball better).

Many stories of athletes hinge on the obstacles—poverty, a disability—they faced growing up. McPhee’s profile might be the first I’ve read that shows how a life of privilege posed difficulties for its subject in becoming a basketball great. 

The banker’s son also sounds remarkably old-fashioned these days because of his college membership in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

The game against Michigan is also intriguing because of the much-anticipated faceoff with Cazzie Russell. The two men, later teammates on the Knicks, proved, after retirement, that there was far more to their lives than the mere ability to shoot a basketball. 

Bradley’s career, as author and three-term U.S. Senator from New Jersey, is well known. Russell—later a basketball analyst and coach with Savannah College of Art and Design—is a minister, now serving as associate pastor of Live Oak Community Church in Savannah.

In reading McPhee’s account, it’s hard not to be reminded of the similarly starry-eyed treatment that sportswriters (usually white) accorded Larry Bird years later. Both players’ intelligence and self-discipline were extolled. 

In contrast, their close African-American counterparts in terms of all-around excellence—Magic Johnson, in Bird’s case; Oscar Robertson, in Bradley’s—were often hailed in physical terms.

Bradley, one suspects, would probably be mortified by this unthinking slighting of blacks. As a teammate of African-Americans, he became annoyed at what he regarded as “white skin privilege.” As a rookie NBA player, he’d receive all kinds of ad offers, but black teammates whose skills he regarded as superior received none.

In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, Bradley’s fame was such that he even inspired a nickname for a nun in my high school, St. Cecilia’s in Englewood, N.J. Her doctors told this Sister of Charity—normally given to teaching the fine points of English and Latin--not to become too excited at games—“‘mind your ticker,’ they tell me”—but she couldn’t help herself.

So, when an opponent dribbled up the court, Sister Margaret Bradley would raise her arms and, in a high, piping voice, exhort our players, echoing the now-familiar chant from Madison Square Garden: “Okay, boys—DEE-FENSE, DEE-FENSE.” 

As a result, she came to share a nickname with the great Knick, one of two she eventually had: “Dollar Bill.” (The other nickname—“Sister Omar”—led her to tell her class, “I know you call me that, but don’t forget—he was a four-star general!”)