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Values
of the Game
By Bill Bradley, October 1998
Artisan, 160 pages
By
Greg Corcoran
Bill Bradley has been either running or in the process of running for
president for some time. Much has been made about his penchant for pedantic
oration and a vocabulary with all the color and imagination of the tax
code. Yet, n Values of the Game, Bradley profoundly and elegantly
writes of the lessons to be learned from sports in general, and his game,
basketball, in particular.
Part coffee-table book, part catechism, this offering certainly comes
at the right time. Values, of course, have lately been much the subject
of our public discourse. And, we travel to and from the extremes in this
nationalism conversation, from the preachy Edward Bennett to the parsing
amorality of our president and his supporters.
But Bradley avoids these parameters. Instead, like the teacher he has
recently been (a visiting professor at Stanford University, the University
of Maryland and Notre Dame), Bradley instructs without chiding
and brings us back to the center. There are those who believe sport merely
reveals character, but Bradley is decidedly in the camp with those who
believe sport builds character.
Of course, sports have been under assault lately. And, with players strangling
coaches, players taunting and fighting over apparently minor transgressions,
and selfishness rampant throughout the athletic arena, it is easy to argue
that as a sporting public, we have lost our way.
Bradley attempts to rectify this. First, he distills the "values" to
be learned from sports into his own Top Ten list. He culls from childhood
memories the lessons that came with his formal education in the sport
of basketball. More important, though, are those lessons learned when
attending his own class, the discipline learned in the many hours spent
shooting alone, the selflessness learned in every game, the resilience
that kept him coming back after each defeat, and his passion for the game.
But, this is no screed against the modern game and players, or
the saintly remembrances of an old athlete of better days. Bradley's examples
are plucked as much from olden days as from the players of today.
Trash talking, for example, is championed as one way to gain an advantage
over an opponent, giving a player an edge by causing the opponent to think
before he acts. But, he tempers this by reminding that as important as
gaining that mental edge is the fact respect for your opponent and the
sport trumps all.
And his lessons are drawn not just from either his playing days,
or only from the all-male world of sports. Bradley spends time
reflecting on the lives of champions of the emerging women's game such
as Chamique Holdsclaw of the University of Tennessee, and on athletes
in track, baseball and his own quick turn at boxing. Bradley's basketball
career is long past, a resident of the attics of our mind. He was an all-America
basketball player at Princeton, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University
and one of the great professional players of the late 1960s and early
1970s, with a reputation as a great shooter and the consummate teammate.
And, for 18 years, he was a senator from New Jersey.
He is part of a select fraternity that took seriously the Greek ideal
that speaks of the pursuit of perfection of mind and body. He is part
of a select fraternity of true sports heroes, joining such luminaries
as former Supreme Court Justice Byron "Whizzer" White, an All-America
football player at Rice, and Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page,
once one of the famed Purple People Eaters of the Minnesota Vikings.
But, this is no scholastic dissertation. Bradley's writing is profound,
yet simple. In a mere 160 pages of large print and many pictures,
Bradley's lessons are writ large, but drawn largely from his experiences,
which makes them more accessible. I most enjoyed his declaration that
he learns more about someone from playing one 10-minute game of 3-on-3
basketball than with a week of conversation.
What comes through here is Bradley's love of the game; his joy
and almost musical appreciation for the beat of the ball against hardwood,
the back-and-forth flow of play, the rhythm of a team of five players
working in harmony toward the goal of, well, the goal. It is somehow appropriate
that Bradley's book would be published by Artisan, a division of Workman
Publishing Co., for as a player, he was a rare commodity - a star with
a blue-collar attitude. This book is a gift that in turn should be
handed to every son and daughter.
Bradley reminds us that, in a world where the few negative examples often
held up as norm, the best and brightest often go unnoticed except by those
closest to them. Bradley takes those many shining examples and tries to
put them at the center of our national conversation. Now, if only he would
stop shooting baskets at every campaign stop.
Grade: A
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