Bill Bradley, Princeton ’65, is without question the greatest basketball player in Ivy League history. He led Princeton to its only Final Four in 1965, arriving there via a shocking 109-69 destruction of a Jimmy Walker-led Providence squad. The 6-foot-5-inch Bradley had perhaps the most acclaimed exit performance in college basketball history, scoring 58 points against Wichita State in a win in the NCAA Tournament consolation game. He was a key member of the gold medal-winning 1964 Olympic basketball team. He was a vital component of two NBA champion Knicks teams. He is, of course, a member of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
Bradley was unlike anyone else in his game, so much so that he had first been profiled by noted essayist John McPhee in a splendid mini-book entitled “A Sense of Where You Are” when he was a Princeton sophomore.
Ken Dryden, Cornell ’69, is without question the greatest goaltender in Ivy League history and, considering his phenomenal NHL career, a good argument can be made he is the greatest Ivy-bred hockey player ever, period. Cornell won the 1967 NCAA title and he won the Stanley Cup six times with the Canadiens. He is, as you might expect, a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame.
The 6-4 Dryden was an intimating presence on the ice, famously resting his chin on his goalie stick as action took place at the other end of the rink. This Boston College fan can say that the two most fearsome foes during his four years at The Heights were the aforementioned Walker in basketball and Dryden in hockey.
There is a lot more.
Bradley did not proceed directly into the NBA. He accepted a Rhodes Scholarship and spent two years at Oxford, during which time he played some high-level European basketball. Dryden left the Canadiens in a contract dispute following his second full NHL season to get his law degree. He returned to win the Stanley Cup four more times.
One Dryden distinction that is safe for eternity is that he is the only athlete who won a postseason MVP before he won Rookie of the Year. After playing just six games in the 1970-71 regular season he was installed as the startling goalie for the playoffs. He stone-walled the record-breaking, high-scoring Bruins en route to a Stanley Cup triumph, winning the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP. He then won the Calder Trophy as the 1971-72 Rookie of the Year.
Each followed his playing career by going into politics. Bradley was a three-term US Senator from New Jersey. Dryden was a member of Canadian Parliament.
And each eventually suffered a painful setback. Bradley lost the 2000 presidential nomination to Al Gore. Dryden was defeated in his quest to head the Canadian Liberal Party.
There is still more. Bradley and Dryden are fellow authors. A further connection is that each authored a memoir without the aid of a collaborator. Every word in each book was written by the athlete himself. And these books are riveting.
Here is what the Baltimore Sun had to say about “Life on the Run,” Bradley’s 1976 book: “Unusually well-written, and it provides us insight to the psyche of the professional athlete that we probably could get from no other source.”
There’s no “probably” about it.
The book stood apart from the pack for seven years. And then Dryden had his say. Writing, as had Bradley, in the present tense, Dryden takes us through a full hockey season from the perspective of a talented, thoughtful insider in a culture outsiders could never have penetrated. There are many who think 1983’s “The Game” is as good a sports book as has ever been written. A recent rereading of both books leads me to think that if “The Game” is No. 1, then “Life on the Run” is 1A. Or is it the other way around? Incidentally, Dryden references Bradley or his book three times in his own tome.
Both icons relentlessly drill into the reader the fact that ”team