Bradley won two NBA championships with the Knicks. Roy DeCarava/SI

Sports Illustrated Associate Editor Richard Deitsch recently interviewed Bill Bradley for the magazine's weekly Q&A. The former U.S. Senator and Basketball Hall of Famer is the host of a new talk show on SIRIUS Satellite Radio [http://www.sirius.com/]. Here are additional excerpts from the interview.

SI: Why would your friend Phil Jackson subject himself again to the rigors of rebuilding an NBA team?

Bradley: Well, he says [it's] redemption. He probably wants to come back and prove he's worthy of the trust [the Lakers] gave him. He wouldn't have done it if he did not have the passion for it.

SI: Would the NBA commissioner's job be of interest to you?

Bradley: It never has been, but the issue has never come up. I think David Stern is doing a wonderful job.

SI: Could you have imagined going straight from high school in Crystal City, Mo., to the NBA?

Bradley: Well, in the summertime I used to scrimmage against pros at Washington University in St. Louis. But I didn't do that more than five or six times. No, I needed to mature intellectually, psychologically and physically.

SI: Do you like the NBA's current on-product?

Bradley: As a fan, I don't particularly like the 3-point rule. I think the objective of the game is to get the easiest shot closest to the basket and do it with a maximum amount of movement. The 3-point rule leaves six people standing out about 30 feet. A player runs a pick and roll, and if he can't make it to the basket or shoot it off the pick, he then throws it out to some guy [on the perimeter]. Not enough passes go in and out. The teams that win the championship still play as teams.

SI: You were raised on a diet of boxing and church, French and golf, diction and etiquette, piano and trumpet. Why didn't any of those endeavors win out over basketball?

Bradley: Probably because basketball was mine. My achievement there was something I did on my own. I was self-motivated by the time I was 14.

SI: Your went to Princeton, were a Rhodes Scholar and won the Sullivan Award [presented to the United States' top amateur athlete] in 1965. When you read about college sports recruiting scandals today, how does it make you feel?

Bradley: It makes me angry. Probably the only piece of legislation I sponsored in the Senate that had anything to do with sports was requiring schools to publish their student-athlete graduation rates. We ended up not bringing it to law because the NCAA implemented that as a rule rather than as a law. We found during our research that some schools didn't graduate like 85 percent of their students. Simply putting out there who graduated gives an indication how much the coach, the program and the school are interested in the whole person, as opposed to just the athletic warrior.

SI: Who from the sports world would you like to talk to?

Bradley: We were talking about getting someone from the Little League World Series. That might be fun. I was a Little Leaguer. I played first base. We actually won our state regional titles and advanced to the sectionals in Otumwa, Iowa. We were behind by one run when I got on first base as the tying run. For some reason I took my foot off of first base, and the [opposing first baseman] used the hidden-ball trick. I was tagged out. A bad memory, but also a great memory.

SI: Why did you decide that now was the time to do a talk show on satellite radio?

Bradley: Well, the first reason is they allow me to do anything I want to do. The second is my first job out of college was in radio. I was a stringer in England For KMOX in St. Louis while I was a Rhodes Scholar. So it's a medium that I've always liked. I don't pretend to be an expert in it. I'm working [as a managing director] at Allen & Co. in New York. But a part of me misses being plugged into the people. Through the radio I'm able to get out to talk to people and interview them in ways I used to when I was a Senator traveling around the country on what I called my American Experience tours.

SI: You won a gold medal with the U.S. basketball team in 1964. Do you support pros being allowed to play in the Olympics?

Bradley: Well, when I played we won the gold medal by beating Russians. A year later I was playing for the Simienthal Meat Packing Firm in Italy, and in the European Cup finals we faced the same Russian team. In other words, it was a pro team. It's very hard to say, no, you should not have professionals [in the Olympics]. Of course I like amateurs to have a shot, so maybe a team of both would be interesting. But certainly any team that goes to the Games should understand the importance and privilege of representing its country.

SI: One of your first guests was a 10-year-old frog-hopping contest winner from South Carolina. What was the first question you wanted to ask him?

Bradley: What is a frog-hopping contest?

SI: So what is it?

Bradley: You line the frogs up and they are supposed to go 15 or 20 feet. You can beat your hand behind the frog to make it jump the way you want.

SI: Are there any current or recently retired athletes you think could do well in political office?

Bradley: There are probably a lot. People always used to say "What about a professional basketball player in the Senate?" or "What about a football player in the House?" The reality is, most of the people in Congress are lawyers. Well, the country is more diverse than lawyers, and the more diverse the people [in Congress are], the more interesting a place it will be. So why not have professional athletes? During my time Mo Udall was there. So were Tom McMillen, Steve Largent, Jim Ryun, Jack Kemp and Jim Bunning.

SI: You dealt with fame from a very early age, at Princeton as a basketball player and then as a professional athlete. But you did so before the Internet and the explosion of cable television. Could you have handled your career the way you did in today's media culture?

Bradley: I don't think the media affected my basketball career. The game is on the court. You either shoot well or you don't. You either play defense or you don't. The media talks about that, but it doesn't really affect it. In politics, it's a little bit the reverse. You need the media in order to get your message out so you are constantly courting them. One of the reasons I went to Oxford was I had difficulty dealing with the mini-celebrity I had. I wanted perspective on it. I certainly believe people who are well known are entitled to privacy.

SI: What's your viewpoint on the NBA's minimum-age rule?

Bradley: I 100-percent support David Stern. I think kids need to mature before they get to the NBA.

SI: You played professional basketball in Italy before coming to the NBA. Could kids today do that as a way to immerse themselves into a professional culture?

Bradley: As an athlete, [playing in Italy] didn't do much for me but as a human being, it was a great experience. I played only in the European Cup, which meant 16 games. I played with a great group of guys in Milano. It was during that time that I had my first really searing experience with the press. The European Cup format required teams to play a game in Milano and a game somewhere else, and the winner was the [one with the most] total points in the two games. It put a premium on home-court advantage. We had beaten the Prague team in Milan by 16 or something. Then we went to Prague and they beat us by 18. The Italian press really took out after me because I was overweight and they said I was not taking it seriously enough. I thought they had a point. I lost weight and began to practice, and then over the next three months we went out and won the European Cup. I remember the banquet after the final game. I went up to the guys who had written those stories and said, "Thanks a lot. It was because of you that I actually got in shape."