The octogenarian Hall of Famer edged forward in his chair, running on Fanta and popcorn and Swiss chocolate, extending both arms toward the television like a sixth Knicks defender in the closing minutes of his old team’s first N.B.A. finals game in a generation.
“Brunson. Come on. Yeah. Heyyyyyyyyyy!” Bill Bradley shouted at the Knicks star Jalen Brunson, beaming in a blue sweater inside his small Manhattan viewing party as New York retook the lead late in its Game 1 victory over the San Antonio Spurs on Wednesday night. “That’s what you do when you’re a champion.”
He knows something about that.
Mr. Bradley, the 82-year-old former United States senator from New Jersey, helped deliver the last Knicks titles in 1970 and 1973, when a three-year drought felt like less of a festering citywide wound.
When this series moves on Monday from San Antonio to Madison Square Garden for Game 3, Mr. Bradley will be there, he said, somewhere beneath his retired No. 24 in the rafters. (The next evening, in this high season of Knicks revelry and reunion, he plans to have dinner with his former teammates Walt Frazier and Earl Monroe, whose numbers hang nearby.)
But with the team in Texas this week, I asked Mr. Bradley if he would mind some extra company for Game 1, wherever he might be watching. He obliged, asking only that the location of his (very) modest gathering — just Mr. Bradley and his daughter, a finals family tradition — not be disclosed for privacy reasons.
To watch championship basketball with Bill Bradley is to talent-scout at Lincoln Center with Baryshnikov, to hear the whispers of Scorsese at a Sundance screening.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
