When a fight broke out between the Houston Rockets and the L.A. Lakers one night in 1977, All-Star Rudy Tomjanovich raced to break it up. He was met by Kermit Washington's fist, which delivered one of the most ferocious punches ever seen in sports. The punch dislodged Tomjanovich's skull, and required years of surgeries and therapy to get him back to normal. He was never the same again. Washington was an average player for the Lakers, 6 foot 8, and one of six athletes in the history of the NCAA to be both an academic all-American and a basketball all-American. By all accounts he was an exemplary man, but the split second in which he threw his fist toward Tomjanovich devastated his reputation. Every team in the NBA has refused to hire him in any coaching capacity. Tomjanovich, on the other hand, is a star: head coach of the two-time world championship Rockets, and coach of the 2000 gold medal US Olympic team.With his unique insight, style, and bone-deep knowledge of basketball, John Feinstein finally reveals the truth of that night, and how it changed basketball forever. Through this one cataclysmic event he casts a light on the NBA's darkest secrets, exploring race, violence, and how one mistake has haunted two good men for 25 years.
Customer Review: Redundant and Bloated
Feinstein is a fine writer but you wouldn't know it from this. This really should have been a retrospective article in Sports Illustrated, not a full-sized book. I often thought there were printing errors in my copy because I was reading similar passages over and over. But no, I suppose Feinstein needed to get a decent sized book so he did what he had to do.
But at least I have a better overall view of Kermit Washington. He's a really great guy in many ways, very charitable and caring. The problem is he's handled just about everything relating to "the punch" poorly. He blames another player, tells Rudy how much he's suffered in a rare meeting, sues the NBA, etc. etc. I think it was John Lucas who advised him to take responsibility and move on, not say "I'm sorry, but...". Unfortunately, Washington hasn't taken this advice. I hope someday he does, because there's no winning when you look for excuses and scapegoats in something horrific you've done.
Customer Review: "I'm sorry, but..."
It has been almost thirty years now (December 9, 1977) since a single ten-second snippet of NBA history forever changed the way that the game of professional basketball is played. On that evening in Los Angeles, Houston Rockets star Rudy Tomjanovich was almost killed by a single punch thrown by Kermit Washington of the Los Angeles Lakers. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, no one realized the tremendous impact that Tomjanovich's injury would have, not only on the lives of the two men directly involved, but on the league itself. John Feinstein's The Punch explains how the paths of Rudy Tomjanovich and Kermit Washington crossed that night in what was really more an accident than a fight and how they have become forever linked in the minds of basketball fans, something about which neither man is happy.
In one very important sense, the NBA of the 1970s resembled the game of hockey as it is played in the NHL. NBA teams depended on superstars to score points and to convince people to buy tickets. Team owners and managers realized that those superstars needed to be protected because their injury or ejection would make or break a team's whole season. For that reason, NBA teams almost always had someone on the floor to serve as the team's enforcer, someone who would make sure that their superstar was not injured in a fight, someone who would often fight the superstar's fight in his place, in fact. Kermit Washington, a fine player in his own right, also served as enforcer for the Los Angeles Lakers and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Washington found himself coming to Abdul-Jabbar's rescue again on that fateful night, something he was used to doing on a regular basis for the hot tempered Abdul-Jabbar. As the players were running from one end of the basketball court to the other, Washington noticed that Abdul-Jabbar was becoming frustrated with the pushing and shoving he was receiving under the basket at the hands of Houston's Kevin Kunnert so he stayed close to the two men rather than running to the other end of the floor. Tomjanovich, Houston's team captain, noticed from his end of the court that his teammate was being manhandled by two Lakers and rushed in to break up the fight. As he approached Washington from behind, with his hands down, Washington turned suddenly and threw a single punch at Tomjanovich. The combination of Washington's strength, the speed at which Tomjanovich was approaching Washington's fist, and the exact location of the punch left Tomjanovich on the floor in a huge pool of blood.
Tomjanovich, who doctors say was lucky to survive the kind of punch that dislodged his skull, did not play again that season. Washington was suspended without pay for sixty days and his career was never really the same again. NBA rules governing player fights grew out of what happened that night because it made league officials aware of the great danger of letting men the size of professional basketball players take swings at each other. The league tightened up to such an extent that even players on the periphery of a fight were subject to fines and suspensions, especially those coming off the bench to involve themselves.
Just as importantly, the lives of Kermit Washington and Rudy Tomjanovich would never be the same. No matter what either player ever achieved on or off the court, each would always be remembered first for "the punch." Each of the men played for several more seasons, and Tomjanovich even coached the Houston Rockets to two NBA championships in the nineties, but both of them are still haunted by what happened during ten seconds of one of the thousands of basketball games they played during their lives.
John Feinstein was able to get both men, their families, and many of the players and coaches who were on the floor that night to share their memories. Rudy Tomjanovich, try as he might, cannot get over the feeling that everyone he meets thinks of him as the player "who got nailed." Kermit Washington has spent his life trying to convince people that he is not a thug who almost killed someone with a sucker punch in a fit of anger.
Feinstein gives equal time to both men, exploring their childhoods, their days as amateur basketball stars, and their professional careers. He does not take sides or make excuses for what happened that night. Instead, he lets both men tell their versions of what happened and how that has affected their lives ever since. Strangely enough, it is Kermit Washington who seems to be having the hardest time dealing with the whole thing. Washington seems to have become somewhat paranoid about what he did and still blames the hit his reputation took that night for everything bad that has happened to him since then. As pointed out by John Lucas, an ex-player who made plenty mistakes of his own, Washington needs to finally just say, "I'm sorry. I screwed up." He will never find the closure that Tomjanovich seems to have found until he stops saying, "I'm sorry, but..."