Knicks’ legend Bill Bradley says owner James Dolan should never sell the team: ‘Hell, no’

NEW YORK -- Former Senator Bill Bradley won two NBA championships with the Knicks in the early 1970s -- and 1973 marked the last time the franchise won a title.

Fifty years later, Bradley, now 80, still keeps an eye on his former team and weighed in on a number of topics, from owner James Dolan to coach Tom Thibodeau to point guard Jalen Brunson to his thoughts on load management. The former Princeton star, three-term Democratic Senator from New Jersey and member of the Naismith Hall of Fame spoke exclusively with NJ Advance Media on Wednesday night when he was the keynote speaker in Manhattan for a non-profit organization known as Public Agenda run by Andrew Seligsohn that launched a new initiative called the Democracy Renewal Project.

Bradley and his teammates from the 1972-73 championship team were honored for the 50th anniversary of their title during halftime of the Knicks’ win over the New Orleans Pelicans on Feb. 26. The Knicks went on to win their first playoff series since 2013 and reach the Eastern Conference semifinals where they lost to the Miami Heat.

Here are Bradley’s thoughts on a number of topics:

Do you have any thoughts on James Dolan as the owner? Magic Johnson just said he would maybe be interested in becoming a minority owner of the Knicks.

“I think Jim Dolan is a good owner, I think he’s done a good job in a very difficult environment. I think too many people criticize him. You gotta focus on what he’s done right. He’s got a great family, and a great operation, Thibodeau and the whole thing.

“Fans gotta blame somebody, but the people to blame [for failing to win a title for so long] are the people who are on the court. He’s not shooting baskets.”

Some people think the culture is to blame. Charles Oakley got arrested at the Garden on Dolan’s watch.

“All that is background noise. You get a winning team, nobody remembers any of that. You don’t have a winning team, then every little thing that happens somebody or another has a problem, and I think that’s ludicrous.”

You don’t see any need for him to sell the team?

“Under no circumstances. If I was Jim Dolan, would I sell the Knicks? Why? Hell, no, I wouldn’t sell the Knicks. If he wants to sell, it’s a free country, he can do anything he wants. I don’t think he should do anything.”

What are your thoughts on the current team?

“I like it. I like Thibodeau, I like his defense. I think he’s got a good team, a good taste of how it feels to win.”

Do you think their trajectory is going upward to where they can contend for a title?

“I don’t know, I don’t know enough about other teams.”

Any thoughts on Damian Lillard to the Milwaukee Bucks?

“One player doesn’t make a team, that’s what people don’t realize.”

Do the Knicks have enough quote-unquote star power to get to a Finals?

“I think they have enough ability.”

Want to bet on the NBA?

Who do you like on the team?

“I like Brunson. He’s a smart player, he has almost learned how to make his teammates a lot better.”

What does he need to do?

“He needs to get the ball to them at the right moments so that they can do something with it, and at the same time maintain himself as a threat offensively. The thing about a point guard is, you grow dramatically with time and your experience helps you a lot. I think he’s got the ability, has a great attitude and there’s no reason he couldn’t do that.”

Who else do you like?

“I like the center [Mitchell Robinson], he’s got a lot of potential. He could be a very real defensive force if he studies what you need to be there. All you gotta do is watch films of [Bill] Russell or films of any number of other players.”

What did your championship teams have that the current Knicks or other teams need to have?

“I don’t know about comparative between this team and that team, but what we had was a meshing of talents, unselfishness. We all recognized that if we helped make our teammates better, we’d be better. And we had complementary skills. We were smart and we knew the game,so all those things came together.”

Do you have any thoughts on load management and what the NBA is doing to curtail it so that star players play in more games?

“Load management, I don’t even know what the hell that means...If you don’t have a body that can play 110 games a year [with playoffs] then you shouldn’t be in the league. I mean, load management. You learn how to deal with the team.”

Anything else that stands out to you in sports today?

“I’m not a big fan of NIL in college, I think that sucks. It turns everybody to chips because the gambling rule changed....And now you’re turning everybody into a commodity. Sports has a lot of different dimensions, and when you get to a pro level, you’re into a monetary dimension.

“But the colleges are deceiving themselves. They think they’re going to make money on this? I don’t get it. They think they’re going to keep talent? I don’t get it. If you have a mediocre set of talents on the court for a university, the kids at the university are for that team.”

But what about the argument that the University and the NCAA are making millions of dollars and the kids aren’t?

“That doesn’t bother me, I didn’t make any money. Nobody made any money. You make money when you turn pro. If you want to make college sports pro, you do it overtly....The NIL, I just don’t like it.”