1) Bill Bradley

Basketball was always seemingly just a lark for Bradley, who majored in history at Princeton, graduated magna cum laude, received a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford, and always showed an interest in politics. Granted, he was also a great basketball player, winning Final Four Most Outstanding Player honors, making two NBA All-Star teams, and nabbing a EuroLeague title for good measure (moonlighting for Italian club Milano while he was studying at Oxford). But the prospect of making a difference through politics impelled Bradley to retire from the NBA at age 33 and pursue a U.S. Senate position. Running as a Democrat on a platform of child welfare expansion and tax reform, Bradley easily won the New Jersey Senate seat in 1978 and held it for three terms before stepping down in 1997. Considered a viable presidential candidate as early as 1988, Bradley finally took a shot at it in 2000, running as a populist alternative to the left of then Vice President Al Gore. It was a spirited campaign, focused on universal health care and gun control and featuring endorsements from Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson, but Bradley suffered too many early primary and caucus defeats, forcing him to withdraw for the race in March of 2000.

2) Mo Udall

When Bill Bradley first ran for U.S. Senate in 1978, he cited Mo Udall as one of his biggest inspirations and for good reason. The 6’5″ Udall had been captain of the Arizona basketball team and played one season for the Denver Nuggets of the NBL before transitioning into law and then politics. He followed in his brother Stewart’s footsteps in the latter, taking over his Arizona congressional district seat via special election when the elder sibling accepted a position in John F. Kennedy’s cabinet. Mo would ultimately serve in that seat for 30 years with highlights including his strong conservation and environmentalism ideals, and a crucial anti-escalation stance during the Vietnam War, breaking with nearly all his fellow Democratic party members. Just like his mentee, Bradley, Udall attempted to parlay his political career into a presidential run by challenging Jimmy Carter in the 1976 Democratic primaries. Unlike Bradley, Udall was successful enough to make it all the way to the convention but still finished a distant second and returned to his congressional position. As for Udall as a basketball player, he was a solid swing man, averaging 6.5 points per game in his one NBL season. It’s an especially impressive feat considering that Udall had lost his right eye in a childhood accident.

3) Robert Jaworski

Athletes finding second public lives as politicians is a concept that’s still slightly taboo in America but in other countries like the Philippines, it’s become de rigueur. Take the case of Jaworski, a Filipino basketball player so popular that the nation’s pro league adopted his silhouette as its logo, a la Jerry West. Born to a Filipino mother and a Polish-American father, Jaworski developed his love of basketball at a young age on the streets of Manila. A combo guard with a well-rounded game (he often drew comparisons to Oscar Robertson, to the point that he was nicknamed “The Big J” in homage), Jaworski was the first big star of the Philippines Basketball Association (PBA), which started play in 1975, leading his Toyota team to nine titles in a 10-year stretch while setting the still-standing league record for assists. He played until the age of 50 and likely would have kept going if not for his political ambitions. Riding the wave of the political party of Joseph Estrada, a former actor turned president of the Philippines, Jaworski was elected to a Senate seat in 1998. His legislation had a strong emphasis on environmental concerns but Jaworski lasted just one term, losing in his re-election in 2004. He reportedly considered several offers to return to basketball as a coach or administrator but opted instead to step away entirely from the sport, spending his retirement accepting honors such as being part of the inaugural PBA Hall of Fame class and getting his visage placed on a Philippines Post Office stamp.

4) Terry Dehere

Basketball was a conduit for Dehere well beyond the working class neighborhoods of Ward F of Jersey City, with pro stints that took him to Los Angeles, Sacramento, Vancouver, and Berlin. When his playing days ended, Dehere returned to his struggling hometown with the intention of creating opportunities for others like him. After a star turn under the legendary Bob Hurley at St. Anthony’s High School, Dehere was an All-American at Seton Hall and a lottery pick of the Clippers in the 1993 NBA Draft. His NBA career was a relative disappointment, averaging 8.0 points per game over just six seasons, and ultimately calling it quits when a comeback attempt through the D-League fell short. Back in Jersey City, Dehere integrated himself right back into the community, opening a restaurant called Sanai’s, starting a non-profit dedicated to creating affordable housing, and personally funding the restoration of a basketball park he frequented in his childhood. While his business and philanthropy ventures were initially a success, Dehere’s forays into politics were similar to his basketball career in their brevity and inefficacy. He ran for a Jersey City council seat in 2001 and lost, then won a position of the city’s Board of Education in 2007 but served just one controversial term before getting defeated in a re-election bid. Unfortunately, his business endeavors ultimately failed as well, with his restaurant closing in 2014 and his housing projects never getting fully built due to dissonance between Dehere and the city government.

5) Kevin Johnson

When the Maloof family repeatedly attempted to re-locate the Kings away from Sacramento in the ’10s, they were continually thwarted by the right mayor in the right place at the right time. While Johnson spent most of his NBA career with Phoenix, he was born and raised in Sacramento and kept consistent ties to his hometown via his founding of St. HOPE, a non-profit foundation for community development. He extended that connection to politics in 2008, defeating the incumbent Heather Fargo in the city’s mayoral race. Keeping the Kings in Sacramento became a central plank of Johnson’s mayorship and he ultimately stymied the Maloofs (and David Stern, who was openly aiding them in relocation efforts) by shepherding a sale of the franchise to local businessman Vivek Ranadive and funding a new arena in downtown Sacramento. With the victory, the charismatic and industrious Johnson seemed poised for national political ascendency but it all came crashing down during his second term as mayor. In addition to corruption scandals regarding St. HOPE and Johnson’s real estate ventures, he was also credibly accused of sexual assault and harassment on multiple occasions. With his political career derailed (and arguably his Naismith Hall of Fame prospects as well), Johnson has turned to restauranteur in recent years, opening and operating several establishments in the Bay Area.

6) Slava Medvedenko
7) Alexander Volkov

Ever since the 2022 Russian invasion forced essentially the entirety of Ukraine to rally in resistance, Americans have seen several familiar faces back in the news, including Volkov and Medvedenko. Volkov started his basketball career in his native Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union) as a teenager and finally reached the NBA in 1989 at the age of 25. After two decent seasons as the Hawks’ backup center, Volkov opted to return to Europe, finishing out his career in Italy and Greece. His political career started with the state’s Committee on Sports and soon after transitioned into an election victory in the Ukrainian Parliament, where he served for eight years. Medvedenko was more successful than Volkov in the NBA but less so in the political sphere. A talented shooter, especially for his frame (6’10”), Medvedenko joined the Lakers in 2000 and became a key bench player for the annual title contenders. His career scoring average over seven seasons was just 5.3 points per game, but Medvedenko walked away from the NBA with two championship rings. He ran for city council in his native Kyiv in 2020 but lost, as his party was defeated by a coalition managed by former boxer and current mayor Vitali Klitschko. Since the war with Russia began, both Volkov and Medvedenko had made headlines for their resistance efforts. Volkov’s family home in Chernihiv was destroyed by bombing, prompting the 57-year-old to take up arms in the volunteer forces. After witnessing numerous atrocities and wan destruction in Kyiv, Medvedenko auctioned off his championship rings to raise money to repair basketball gyms and other local youth shelters. When Lakers owner Jeannie Buss heard about the auction, she invited Medvedenko to Los Angeles for a ceremony in which she presented her former player with two newly minted rings as replacements.

8) Royce White

2020 was arguably the strangest year in U.S. history, between the COVID-19 pandemic, contentious presidential election, mass racial justice protest movements, and splintering of the traditional online social media hegemony. The NBA was peculiarly at the epicenter of much of this, its stop-and-start ’19-’20 season serving as a sort of bellwether of the American temperament. White was long gone from the league by then, having last played for the Kings in 2014, but rose up through and from the crumbling ashes of American politics and culture, like an anti-Semitic Phoenix. Though his NBA career had technically lasted just three nondescript games over the course of about 18 months, White was a media sensation throughout it. This was due to his highly public stand-off with the Rockets, who drafted him #16 overall in 2012 only to enter a lengthy negotiation process in which their first round pick held out of training camp, the regular season, and a D-League assignment in pursuit of increased mental health concessions. While this derailed White’s NBA career, it did bring him a fair amount of media attention and a reputation as a mental health advocate. What has he done with this platform? Well, starting in 2020, he’s mutated it from a righteous battle of labor vs. capital into a sounding board for his own personalized brand of misogyny, anti-Semitism, and MAGA-styled conspiracy theorizing. That messaging has come in several forms, from his podcasts to bizarre messages penned on his bald head during Big3 games (e.g., “Alex Jones was right”) to now two political campaigns in his home state of Minnesota. First, White ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2022 but finished second in the Republican primary behind Cicely Davis. Rather than retreat to the lucrative right-wing media-sphere, White opted to double down in 2024, going after Amy Klobuchar’s U.S. Senate seat. This time, he won the Republican primary in a mild upset over the more traditional candidate Joe Fraser. Will White follow in the footsteps of Bill Bradley and Mo Udall in the NBA-to-Senate pipeline? Never say never but the latest polling as of this writing has him trailing the popular Democratic incumbent by about 20 percentage points.

9) Dave Bing

Long before Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, Chauncey Billups, or Ben Wallace, Bing was the initial face of Detroit Pistons basketball. The #2 overall pick in the 1966 NBA Draft, Bing spent nine seasons with Detroit, winning Rookie of the Year, making six All-Star teams, and finishing in the top five in the league in assists per game five times. But he couldn’t lift the otherwise moribund franchise to any postseason glory, reaching the playoffs just three times, all of them first round losses. Fast forward to 2008, with the Pistons finishing off an incredible six year run that included six Conference Finals appearances, two trips to the NBA Finals, and one title. But the city of Detroit was hitting a low point, with mayor Kwame Kilpatrick resigning in disgrace amidst a host of scandals and the economy and fiscal budget cratering as a result of the recent global financial crisis. With the chips down again for his beloved adopted city, Bing, who was born and raised in D.C., stepped in an announced his candidacy to replace Kilpatrick as mayor. Bing was victorious in the subsequent election but just like his playing career, his mayoralty was intriguing and well-intentioned but ultimately fruitless for Detroit. While Bing did succeed in bringing some sense of propriety back to the position, he was unable to cease the tide of financial and budgetary catastrophes that were already on rails. In a parallel to his 1975 trade from the Pistons to the Bullets, Bing was shunted aside from the mayor’s office in 2013, when the state’s governor placed the city under emergency management and ultimately declared it bankrupt. While his time as mayor was unsuccessful, Bing has remained active in the Detroit community since, most notably in his Bing Youth Institute, which provides services and education for at-risk youth in the city.