YouSaid · the spoken record

Bill Bradley

lines on the record
72
first
2017-09-28
most recent
2017-09-28
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “They held, and the union got recognized. I came in 1967 and I became the player rep of the Knicks, which is the Union, the Stuart Union Stuart. And the issue was there was something called the reserve clause. The reserve clause says that the Nicks draft me, I can't go anywhere else unless the Nicks trade me or allow me to go. It was imperpetuity bound to the Nicks. Well, we felt that was unfair as a union, and so we also got wind that there was another league at that time. And so now we have a chance for another league. And maybe they'll be bidden.”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “And what was Well, it was 1965, and the players decided they want a union. So at the All-Star game, the player said, we're not going out to play unless the unions recognize. Right. Couple of the owners came in threatening the players. We'll fire you tonight. You finish in this league. There's ABC.”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “In warm ups, right? And probably within three weeks people realized that I was too slow to play guard and was not making it and the public turned on me and people spit on me. They threw coins at me. They accosted me in the streets. And so it taught me a very important lesson, you know. And the lesson was what do you do in that kind of circumstance? And the only thing you do is you work harder and work harder. And I think that it also made me realize how lucky I was after that moment to have found the right niche on the right team at the right time.”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I was, but other players were smart enough to know if he gets this next time I'm getting a lot more And that is indeed what happened. But when I came in I was kind of the white hope, you know, and I was the darling of the media and this high priced player. And the first night I played in the garden. seventeen five was the old garden, seventeen thousand five hundred people cheered every time I touched the wall. I remember it. In warmups.”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Well, that was a very important time in my life that really helped me for the rest of my life. I mean, yeah, I signed a bigger contract when I came in, the average job was $9,500 and I got $125. So yes, that aspect of it.”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “You're not the most teammates on the neck used to joke that if I had my highest leap, you could just slip the Sunday New York Times under my feet.”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “But I mean, your point about having that happen in politics, you know, I really appreciate it. Any endeavor that you do as a community that is truly selfless, where you're doing your part, but you're feeling your fulfillment in the collective achievement. I mean, your fulfillment isn't that you got 30 points. Your fulfillment is if you win a championship or the campaign. Right. I do think there is a comparison you might have a great group of people terrific. Everybody gets along. If you don't win, right. Who cares I'd say you got to win. It's only when you win that you can take joy and pleasure.”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “The character of the people you play with, the selflessness, the imagination, the discipline, it makes a big difference. The quality of people's character in a game is so important because if you're playing, you have to sacrifice yourself for them time and time again. Guy tries to make a steal, misses somebody to pick up his man, so somebody's got to pick up somebody else's man. Right. And if you don't do that, you won't win. And the only reason you do that is because you're selfless. And the only reason you're selfless is you know that's the only way you're going to win.”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “And so we're standing around this room and Cassie says, can I talk to you, Bill? And I said, yeah. And so I went over and he said, Bill, I'm a Christian preacher now in South Carolina. And I cannot preach my best sermon. If there's anything heavy on my heart. And so Bill, if I ever said anything or did anything in those years that hurt you, would you forgive me? And I said sure, and if I ever said and did anything in those years that hurt you, would you forgive me? He said, yes, we hugged and forty years of tension disappeared.”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “and we were extremely intense, you know, on the other side of the floor would be Phil Jackson, Dave De Buscher, and De Buscher would say to Jackson, hey, let's take it easy. We got a game Torona. We're hamburger. And so we have, and as a result, we respected each other, but we could never really kind of be close. And 40 years after the 1970 championship, which will be 2010, we have the 40th anniversary of that team. So I walk into the room, here's Cassie and Willis. Willis Reed and wife, spouse, friends, whatever. And I sense that I'm still just a little tense about this, so I'm not open. So the next night, the Nicks say, come early to the game because we want the current Nicks to meet you. One current Nick shows up.”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “And the years with the Knicks were great years, obviously Because of the group of people that I played with, and it was the first time I lived in a predominantly African American world, and I learned more from my teammates than they ever learned from me. And to give you an idea of the caliber of the character of the people, Kazie Russell, who's a Chicago guy, and I for the first couple years I was on the team before he was traded, were involved in this intense competition, divided in New York fans. Some people like Bradley, some people like Russell.”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “I was a college student, and his father was the college sports doctor And John, deciding one to write an article, and he always wanted to write for the New Yorker, never had many things rejected. He wrote this piece about me and put it in New Yorker and later a book. It was his first book and first piece in New Yorker. And the title Since Where You Are comes from, we're in the gym alone and going through things and I have a shot across the middle that I actually modeled off of Jerry West. And so I sit in the baskets behind me, and I see where I'm in a court and I throw the ball up, and it goes in. He said, How'd you do that? And I said, well, you just have a sense of where you are on the court. Right. And That took on a larger metaphor”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Just as a point of interest right before this interview, I was talking to a guy who's writing an article for the New York Times magazine about John McVee. Oh, is that right? Yeah. Because John published his penultimate book about”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “One thing, if you go look at all of the press reports of the year's Red Coach, he never said one word that was negative about any one of his players in the press. But, you know, in the locker room or in the huddle, you know, he would rip you apart, but he didn't get into that game.”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Won many titles. 10 or 11 NCA more than anybody else. And he said that if I do my job, which is every day teach people how to play basketball, then my job is done by the time we get to the game because they'll go out there and do it. I think that's true. I think there's a lot of that. I think there's a little too much made of the decision the coach makes in the second quarter or whatever. The issue is do you have a team that understands what the basic rules are? When I was with the Knicks, the basic rules were hit the open man, help out on defense, and red Holzman's rules. And the third rule was the hotel bar belongs to me.”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “You came up with I think that I didn't make these glasses. So somebody made them I would do that, and then I would stack chairs like ten shares so it'd be like eight feet high, and I'd shoot my hook shots over the eight foot chairs. All the things you do when you're committed and when you are alone in a small town.”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Sometimes alone. I grew up in a small town and I didn't play football. A lot of people played football. There weren't that many more people. One or two guys would work out with me. And so I would essentially choreograph the reverse pivot or the crossover dribble or the turnaround jump shot or the dribble jump shot or the reverse layup. And I just go through it over and over and over and I would put glasses that blocked my vision down so I couldn't see the ball, so I had to learn to bounce the ball without.”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “And Isiad Macaulay would assemble the campers, about a hundred of us, every day, and give us a little talk. And one day he said, Remember, if you're not practicing somebody somewhere is practicing, if you two meet given roughly equal ability, he's going to win. And side to side I never want to lose because I hadn't put any effort. So that meant from the time I was thirteen I spent three hours every afternoon during the week playing basketball and five hours on Saturday and Sunday for nine ten months a year.”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Yeah, but Well, there are a lot of ways to answer that question. When I was 14 years old, I went to a basketball camp that was put on by a pro named Ezyed McCall.”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “As a player you never pay attention to who, no matter who is up there screaming, whether it's your mother or the opponent's mother.”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “I was an only child. And so I grew up in that town, and my parents obviously played a big role. My mother, I remember seeing a picture of my mother in nineteen twenty seven when she was in high school. It was a picture of a basketball team. But that's the extent. My father had never seen a basketball game, and my father was what we call today disabled. He had calcified arthritis to the lower spine I never saw him tie his shoes throw a ball, drive a car. And he just worked in the bank and was on the treasure of the school board for over twenty years. And he saw his first basketball game when I think I was in the seventh or eighth grade. And in high school, my mother would be in the stands yelling. My father would be in a special chair at one end of the court over on the right.”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Well, I think that neither one of them was really into my basketball. You know, my father, the town I grew up in was about 3,000 people on the banks of the Mississippi River. It was a multi-ethnic, multiracial factory town. When I grew up, there were 3,000 people working in a glass factory. And my father, who had not graduate from high school and went to work in the bank, as he said when he was 21 years old, shining pennies, had worked his way up. And my mother was an energetic church-going civic club attending college graduate who poured all of her energy into one thing, me. You were an older.”

    2017-09-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 175 - Bill Bradley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source