Life on the Run

Almost three decades after its original publication and more than twenty-five years after its author retired from the New York Knicks to become a United States senator, Bill Bradley's account of twenty days in a pro basketball season remains a classic in the literature of sports, unparalleled in its candor and intelligence.

Bradley takes readers from a court to the locker room, from the seamless teamwork of a winning game to the loneliness of a motel in a strange city.  We see Bradley and his fellow Knicks as they withstand the abuse of the press and the smothering adoration of their fans, along with the shameless appeals of those who want to parlay their celebrity into a fast buck. We watch in horror as Earl Monroe is beaten outside Madison Square Garden barely an hour after twenty thousand people cheered him. And we come to understand the euphoria and exhaustion, the icy concentration and intense pressure, that are felt only by those who play basketball for keeps.

Praise for Life On The Run

“A remarkable, searching, smart book…absorbing, thoughtful.” – Newsweek

“A thinking man’s guide to basketball [with] fascinating insights into the author himself.” – Wall Street Journal

“A remarkable book written by a remarkable man.” – Sporting News

Excerpt from Life on the Run (pages 220-221):

The money and the championships are reasons I play, but what I’m addicted to are the nights like tonight when something special happens on the court. The experience is one of beautiful isolation. It cannot be deduced from the self-evident, like a philosophical proposition. It cannot be generally agreed upon, like an empirically verifiable fact, and it is far more than a passing emotion. It is as if a lightning bolt strikes, bringing insight into an uncharted area of human experience. It makes perfect sense at the same time it seems new and undiscovered. The moment in basketball depends on the blending of human forces at the right time and in the right degree. It goes beyond the competition that brings goose pimples or the ecstasy of victory. With my team, before the crowd, against our opponent, no one else but me can feel what it all means. It’s my private world. No one else can sense the inexorable rightness of the moment. A back-door play that comes with perfect execution at a critical time charges the crowd, but I sense an immediate transporting enthusiasm and a feeling that everything is in perfect balance.

Those moments require a childlike imagination. “We can only know as adults what we can only feel as children,” says Leslie Fiedler. In those moments on a basketball court I feel as a child and know as an adult. Experience rushes through my pores as if sucked by a strong vacuum. I feel the power of imagination that creates a sense of mystery and wonder I last accepted in childhood, before the mind hardened. When a friend tells me that his son cries when I miss a last-second shot, I know how he feels. I cry a little, too. That’s why ultimately when I lay for anyone outside the team, I play for children. With them the communication of joy or sorrow rings true and through the playing that allows me to continue feeling as a child I sense a child’s innocent yearning and love.

Excerpted from Life on the Run by Bill Bradley © 1976. Reprinted with permission by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc.