The last time the New York Knicks were in a position to win the NBA Finals, the league looked very different. It was 1973, there was no three-point line, and Jalen Brunson’s father — a former Knick and now an assistant coach — was about to turn 1.
Bill Bradley was the small forward on that 1973 Knicks team, scoring 20 points in the win that clinched the championship over the Los Angeles Lakers. He has achieved much in his life: a championship in ’70 and ’73, an All-Star appearance, a retired jersey in the rafters of Madison Square Garden, and three terms as a Democratic senator after he hung up his Converse. But Bradley, 82, remembers the championship like it was yesterday. Ahead of game five, I caught up with him about what his rings mean to him and what a championship could mean to the franchise after a 53-year drought.
Fifty-three years is a long time to go without a title. I wanted to ask first about what it was like playing back in ’73. Were you guys flying in coach?We had made some progress with the players’ union. We had a per diem. We hadn’t moved to charter yet, we were flying first class. But we spent plenty of nights in airports waiting for planes. I didn’t eat any special diet whatsoever.
