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"I'm mostly interested in finding out more about him," said the actor. "I'm from New Jersey, so I probably have a greater awareness than some. He was our senator for a long time. I was always a big fan, and as a Knicks fan, I'm happy to be at the Garden."

"Right," I said. "But are you supporting him or are you just interested in finding out more about him?"

"You know," Hawke said, "I'm interested in getting educated about the whole thing."

The hoops stars were being lined up around us like redwoods: Bill Walton, Malone, Lucas, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

"I don't think I've ever felt shorter in my whole life," I said.

"And you're taller than me, so how do you think I feel?" joked actor Keitel.

Next, I grabbed Lucas, who became famous after quitting basketball for promoting a better-memory-through-mnemonics plan. On TV that morning, Lucas had said that he and Bradley had "secret signals" that they transmitted to one another.

"Bill's a man of leadership, a man I've known my entire life," Lucas told me, "and one of the things I said this morning is that Bill's always been a 'HIT.' That H-I-T has been important in my life and his life, because to me that stands for Honesty, Integrity and Trust."

"I heard you talk about some of the cues you would give him, the shorthand," I said. "Can you give us an example of that?"

"Well, we did some unique things with verbal communication, and I taught him some of my learning systems and what they meant," Lucas said, "and actually he and I were the only ones on our team that knew them. He would say a verbal cue and then I knew what he was going to do, which direction he was going to go ... we knew what he was going to do and then I could take advantage."

Just as I was getting to the bottom of all this, another reporter started harassing Lee about the time he called for the execution of National Rifle Association chieftain Charlton Heston; Lee reportedly called security on us and we were all ejected back into the stands.

After the celebs were all introduced and applauded, the individual testimonials began. The most well-received was that of former Boston Celtic Bill Russell, who recalled giving Bradley a little shit the first time they met, after Bradley had just returned from his Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford. "Tell me about the personal life history of Cecil Rhodes," Russell had asked him.

Bradley handled the question well, Russell said. As a longtime opponent of Bradley on the court, Russell said he came to know him well and eventually befriended him -- coming to the conclusion that Bradley was "one of the most honest people I've ever met." Bradley knows that "telling the truth to the American people is the right thing, no matter how difficult the subject," Russell said.

For former Cincinnati Royal Robertson, supporting Bradley was all about empowerment. "It seems like we always have a leader picked for us," he said. "Now we can do the picking, for Bill Bradley."

The plaudits continued in this vein, whether seen through the sports-psychobabble of "teamwork" (discussed in a round table featuring Meyers-Drysdale, McEnroe, Abdul-Jabbar and Erving) or by cagers with names like "the Big E," "the Big O" and "the Big D."

Bradley was tenacious, testified Havlicek, who claimed that Bradley had hand-checked him so often that he still has Bradley's palm-print on his ass. Dick Barnett said he was compelled by the fact that "one of Bradley's main campaign themes ... is the matter of racial priority."

Then someone had the bright idea to hand the microphone over to Walton. Walton's always been something of a controversial figure: A fiery anti-war activist arrested when he was at UCLA and questioned by the FBI during the whole Patty Hearst/Symbionese Liberation Army brouhaha, Walton says that UCLA coach John Wooden and Jerry Garcia are the two greatest influences of his life. He was sued by the Los Angeles Clippers in 1989 for (wink, wink) "engag[ing] in certain activities detrimental to his health."

Walton, an unrepentant lefty, talked up Bradley's policies on education, "the reduction and hopeful elimination of poverty," race relations and abortion. He decried the Reagan and Bush years, and called the presence of Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court a "sad joke."

"Why do you guys give Walton the mike?" I asked Bradley press secretary Tony Wyche.

"For guys like you," he said.

As a treat for the kiddies, as well as shameless adult fans, a relay race was set up in which competitors from the audience could run the length of the court, weaving in and out of rubber bumpers, and take a lay-up.

It was boring and brutal and enough already. Suck's Anuff, groaning next to me, seemed to agree.

"What do you think?" I asked him.

"Bradley 1, crowd 0," he said.

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