101 Greats of European Basketball

Senator between
the hoops
The death in 2011 of Cesare Rubini, a great
legend in Italian sport, reminded me of
the first triumph of an Italian team in the
European Cup, the forerunner to today’s
EuroLeague. It happened in the 1965-66
season in Bologna, in what was the first
Final Four ever, although that format lasted only two
seasons at that time, not to be reinstated again until
1988.
The Final Four teams in 1966 were eventual champs
Simenthal Milano, Slavia Prague, CSKA Moscow and
AEK Athens. Rubini was the boss of the Milano team
that would win the title. In the semifinals, the Italian
team defeated CSKA by 68-57, and in the title game,
played on April 1, Milano stopped Prague by 77-72.
Duane “Skip” Thoren scored 21 points, Gabriele
Vianello 21, Sandro Riminucci 10, Gianfranco Pieri 4,
Massimo Masini 3, Giandomenico Ongaro 4 – and Bill
Bradley 14.
Bill Bradley... Without a doubt, he is one of the best
Americans to ever play in Europe, but his life and his
two careers, sports and politics, deserve a story of
their own. William Warren Bradley was born on July
28, 1943, in Crystal City, Missouri. In high school,
he was already a national-level star in basketball.
He scored 3,068 points and received scholarship
offers from 75 universities! At the beginning, he had
chosen legendary Duke University, but during the
summer of 1961, he broke his leg playing baseball.
Thinking about his future outside of basketball, he
finally chose Princeton, even refusing a scholarship
promised by Duke. Already in his first season as a
freshman, he scored more than 30 points per game
and made 57 free throws without a miss. As a sophomore,
he was already a starter on the team and in
1963 he made the all-American first team. Even then
there was word that Bradley was ready to play in the
NBA, but he wanted his degree first. He earned his
spot on the U.S. national team for the 1964 Olympics
in Tokyo, where he would become the best player. In
the semifinals against Puerto Rico (62-42), he scored
16 points and in the title game against the USSR (73-
59) he scored 10. In his last season with Princeton,
as team captain, he took the team to the NCAA Final
Four. They lost in the semifinal but in the game for
third place Bradley scored 58 points and was named
MVP of the tourney.
Day-a-week champion
Bradley finished at Princeton with 2,503 points for a
30.2 average. In 1965, he won the James Sullivan prize,
the highest accolade in American amateur sports. He
was the first basketball player to ever win the award.
He was the most desired player for NBA teams and,
according to the rules of the time, as a territorial pick,
the New York Knicks selected him in the draft. But pro
basketball was not in Bradley’s plans just yet. He had
also won a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to attend
Oxford University in England for post-graduate studies.
And this is where Simmenthal Milano comes into the
story. The club offered Bradley a good economic deal
and also some terms that would be almost impossible
today. Bradley only had to play in the EuroLeague
games. He didn’t even practice regularly with the team,
101 greats of european basketball
Bill Bradley
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