Customer Reviews

Life on the Run

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After reading John McPhee's account of Bill Bradley's years at Princeton, I put the book down and thought it was too good to be true. No NBA player I've ever seen is THAT smart. But after reading Bradley's own Life on the Run, I recant. Bradley IS that smart, and he's a hell of a writer to boot. This one can be spoken about with the same kind of respect due the classic sports profiles, including McPhee's own Levels of the Game. I'm glad I took a chance on this book. It was a real pleasure.

Bradley's memoir of the waning games in the New York Knicks' 1973-74 season (the season after they won their second NBA championship) contains many observations about professional sports that, unfortunately, continue to ring true today: the shameless exploitation of undereducated athletes by agents and comparable parasites; the intrinsic harshness of an itinerant existence during a roadtrip on the West Coast; the grueling physical and mental demands of the NBA regular season; the evanescent nature of fan support. Given all of the above, why then would anyone want to play NBA basketball? Well, Bradley also does a fine job of describing the many thrills an athlete can derive from, among other things, being exhalted by home fans; winning a championship; and being part of a selflless team unit that manages to sublimate individualistic tendancies in its pursuit of greater goals. Bradley's book, from what I can gather, was revolutionary for its time in that it eschewed the type of hagiographic approach that many writers took toward the world of professional sports and ablely demonstrated the myriad difficulties associated with being a player in the nation's largest media spotlight. It should be a must- read for all aspiring NBA players -- especially those players who are considering foregoing several (or all) years of their collegiate eligibilities to make a fast buck. They should be forewarned: "All that glitters isn't gold."

Bill Bradley's account of three weeks in the life of an NBA team in the '70's is as much a stunningly insightful social commentary as it is a nice, easily-rambling, "On the Road"-style ride. Beautiful.

With all the hoopla surrounding Bradley's potential run at the presidency, this book offers unique insight from a non-politics perspective. It chronicles the last few weeks of a Knick's season, and all the emotion that comes with it. Also, Bradley provides commentary on a variety of topics which are still very relevant... i.e. the formation of the NBA Player's Association. The book reads very well, and there is interesting background coverage of Bradley's teammates, many of whom are well-known today. I HIGHLY recommend this book to everyone - from sports buff to the just curious. It is awesome!

FORMER NBA PLAYER BILL BRADLEY TAKES US THROUGH SOME OF THE 1973-74 KNICKS SEASON, AS SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF BRADLEY, EARL MONROE, WILLIS REED AND DAVE DEBUSSCHURE. MOST OF IT IS INTERESTING AND WELL WRITTEN. IT IS NOT A TELL ALL OR CONTROVERSIAL BOOK BUT PRETTY MUCH A FACTS ONLY BOOK. SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS ARE HOW THE PLAYERS SPEND THEIR DOWN TIME ON ROAD TRIPS, THE AVAILABILITY OF WOMEN WHO WILL SLEEP WITH JUST ABOUT ANY PLAYER, AND THE INNERPLAY OF THE KNICKS IN PRACTICE AND ON PLANES. I LIKED THIS BOOK BUT IT IS NOTHING GREAT AND IT IS BORING AT TIMES BUT STILL WORTH A PEEK.

This made me wish that Bradley could have emerged as a strong presidential candidate. It covers a really fascinating life well and does so in a thoughtful and honest way. Could this be the best book writer by a politician?

Read back to back with John McPhee and Bill Bradley's excellent book about Bradley's Princeton basketball team (A Sense of Where You Are). Similarly excellent account of Bradley and the champion New York Knicks, affectionately profiling his teammates, especially roommate Dave DeBusschere, who was retiring.

Bill Bradley does an amazing job of showing what the NBA was like in the 1970s from the small details of what the locker room was like to how race relations impacted the players on his team. His player profiles were so insightful and I particularly enjoyed his looks at non-teammate greats like Oscar Robertson, Wilt Chamberlain, and Bill Russell.

I thoroughly loved the book and recommend it to any NBA fan who wants a peak at a bygone era.

What I Liked:

-The way Bradley considers the existential bleakness of the professional athlete's life
-The casual ambivalence with which Bradley justifies one-night stands

What I Didn't Like:

-There was one stream-of-conscious passage during a game situation that I remember not liking very much. Or, like, I could imagine Bradley writing that passage and thinking it was really good and creative and that made me feel a little sorry for him. Whatever, he's human.

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.