Bradley was born and raised in Crystal City, Missouri, a small town 45 miles (72 km) south of St. Louis.

He won a gold medal as a member of the 1964 Olympic basketball team and was the Most Outstanding Player of the 1965 NCAA Tournament, when Princeton finished third.

After graduating in 1965, he attended Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship where he was a member of Worcester College, delaying a decision for two years on whether or not to play in the National Basketball Association (NBA).

[6][7][8][9] Politicians and politics were standard dinner-table topics in Bradley's childhood, and he described his father as a "solid Republican" who was an elector for Thomas E. Dewey in the 1948 presidential election.

He was a star at Crystal City High School, where he scored 3,068 points in his scholastic career, was twice named All-American, and was elected to the Missouri Association of Student Councils.

He put ten pounds of lead slivers in his sneakers, set up chairs as opponents and dribbled in a slalom fashion around them, and wore eyeglass frames that had a piece of cardboard taped to them so that he could not see the floor, for "a good dribbler never looks at the ball.

[17] However, after breaking his foot in the summer of 1961 during a baseball game and thinking about his college decision outside of basketball, Bradley decided to enroll at Princeton due to its record in preparing students for government or United States Foreign Service work.

[22] In his sophomore year Bradley scored 40 points in an 82–81 loss to St. Joseph's and was named to The Sporting News All-American first team in early 1963.

[25] At the Olympic basketball trials in April 1964, Bradley played guard instead of his usual forward position but was still a top performer.

[30] Bradley holds a number of Ivy League career records, including total and average points (1,253/29.83, respectively), and free throws made and attempted (409/468, 87.4%).

Ivy League season records he holds similarly include total and average points (464/33.14, 1964) and most free throws made (153 in 170 attempts, 90.0%, 1962–1963).

[19] Each year improving from mediocre freshman grades, Bradley graduated magna cum laude[13] after writing his senior thesis about Harry S. Truman's 1940 United States Senate campaign,[24] titled "On That Record I Stand",[33][34] and received a Rhodes Scholarship at Worcester College, Oxford.

[36] The New York Knicks—one mile closer to Princeton than the Philadelphia 76ers[6]—drafted Bradley as a territorial pick in the 1965 draft, but he did not sign a contract with the team immediately.

[36][37] While studying Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE) at Oxford, he commuted to Italy to play professional basketball for Olimpia Milano, then called Simmenthal, during the 1965–66 season,[24] where the team won a European Champions Cup (predecessor to the modern EuroLeague).

(On March 6, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared that he would issue an executive order that Selective Service deferments for post-graduate study would henceforth be limited to the medical and dental fields.

Hall of Fame Knick's coach Red Holzman did not consider the physical aspect too serious, describing their rivalry as "two intense players in a matchup of skills and the will to win.

The New York Times's review of the book stated that "it does not seem ... that there was much in the way of intellectual contact" with teammates, and speculated that after basketball "Perhaps he will turn to politics at last".

The toll of providing that experience is beginning to register on me"Are you being subtly programmed into being a certain kind of person with a narrow range of traditional career alternatives?"

Case lost the Republican primary to anti-tax conservative Jeffrey Bell, who, like Bradley, was 34 years old as the campaign season began.

[8] In the Senate, Bradley acquired a reputation for being somewhat aloof and was thought of as a "policy wonk",[50] specializing in complex reform initiatives.

The legislation proposed to keep Mount Rushmore within the US Park Service and 1.3 million acres of the Black Hills to return to jurisdiction under a Sioux National Council.

[57] In 1990, a controversy over a state income tax increase—on which he refused to take a position—and his proposal on merit pay for teachers, which led the NJEA to support his opponent, turned his once-obscure rival for the Senate, future governor Christine Todd Whitman, into a viable candidate, and Bradley won by only a slim margin.

He promised to address the minimum wage, expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, allow single parents on welfare to keep their child support payments, make the Dependent Care Tax Credit refundable, build support homes for pregnant teenagers, enroll 400,000 more children in Head Start, and increase the availability of food stamps.

[64] Although Gore was considered the party favorite,[60] Bradley received a number of high-profile endorsements, including senators Paul Wellstone,[65][66] Bob Kerrey, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan;[67] former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich;[68] former New York City mayor Ed Koch; former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker; and basketball stars Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson.

[73][74] Bradley later called it a "great honor" to be the presenter when Jackson was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007.

McCain was also ultimately unsuccessful, but he resonated better with independent voters and stole Bradley's "thunder" on several occasions, including an upset win in New Hampshire over eventual GOP nominee George W.

He said that he would continue to speak out regarding his brand of politics, calling for campaign finance reform, gun control, and increased health care insurance.

[81] Oxford University awarded Bradley an honorary Doctor of Civil Law (DCL) in 2003, with a citation that described him in part as "an outstandingly distinguished athlete, a weighty pillar of the Senate, and still a powerful advocate of the weak".

[87] He has occasionally been involved in political matters, most recently consulting the Senate Finance Committee on tax reform along with former colleague Bob Packwood.

[90][91][92] Bradley is a co-chair for the advisory board of Issue One,[93] a non-profit whose goal is to reduce the influence of money in American politics.