Bill Bradley's Life on the Run is an insightful and thoughtful account of what it was like to be a professional basketball player in the mid-1970s. Bradley writes about a bygone era--one where all the players weren't multimillionaires, teams traveled commercial, there was no ESPN and media oversaturation and players roomed together. While some things have changed since the book was published nearly 35 years ago, many of the things are the same.
Bradley, a star at Princeton, chose to attend Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar for two years before joining the New York Knicks in the NBA. He thought he wouldn't play professionally, but he realized he missed the game while at Oxford.
Bradley was the symbol of the Christian, scholar/athlete, but he says much of that image was overblown. "I studied, practiced and went to church, but the media exaggerated each facet of my life until expectations were such that I could never fulfill. The greater the acclaim, the more certain it was that the public appetite could never be satisfied. The only way out, I thought, was to reject basketball and become a lawyer or businessman."
Bradley says being a professional athlete is a mixed blessing. He shows both sides of the coin in his book. He tells how players spend their days (and yes it's boring much of the time), how they cope with physical exertion, travel and constant aches and pains. He provides interesting profiles of his teammates and says that on many teams friendship is overblown and even hypocritical.
Unlike most players today, Bradley was obsessed with team basketball and not individual statistics. "I do not depend on the outside for recognition," writes Bradley. "The press and public approval mean little to me. What is important is my own judgment as to whether the team plays according to my estimate of how an ideal team should."
The 1970 championship Knicks vindicated Bradley's concept and approach to the game.
"Success of the group assures the success of the individual," he writes, "but not the other way around."
It's truly a pleasure to rub shoulders with Bradley and his Knick teammates for 230 pages.
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