The Punch

by John Feinstein

  “We were looked upon as a league that was too black, too violent, and too drug-involved during the late seventies,” he said. “The drug problem existed, though it was probably not as bad as it was sometimes portrayed. The violence was without question a major issue, something that had to be dealt with.”

  The previous season the league had seen forty-one fights that had led to at least one ejection. That didn’t count all the skirmishes that broke out and were stopped before someone had to be ejected. If there had been any doubt about the need for a crack-down, it had been wiped out during game two of the finals, when Darryl Dawkins and Portland’s enforcer, Maurice Lucas, had gotten into a frightening fight near the end of the game.

  “One thing was obvious,” Stern said. “You couldn’t allow men that big and that strong to go around throwing punches at each other.”

  Brent Musburger, who did the play-by-play on that game for CBS, remembers thinking when that fight broke out: “This is bad, very bad. Here we have the league’s showcase event and we’re looking at a near riot. I knew [NBA commissioner] Larry O’Brien had to be squirming watching that unfold.”

  The owners voted that summer to strengthen the rules governing fighting. Previously the commissioner could fine a player a maximum of $500 and suspend him for up to five days without pay for fighting. Under the new rules O’Brien had the authority to fine a player up to $10,000 and suspend him indefinitely. O’Brien had been given the opportunity to flex his new muscle right away when Abdul-Jabbar slugged Benson on opening night. The fine was $5,000, but O’Brien opted not to suspend him since he had broken his hand and would be out for six weeks anyway.

  The owners had also discussed the idea of going to three-man officiating crews. The previous season there had been some experimentation with three-man crews, and the officials had thought it worked well. As the game got faster and the players stronger, it was more and more difficult for two men to control a game. But going to three-man crews would mean hiring a new wave of officials. Money was tight for most owners. They voted the change down.

  So it was Rakel and Middleton working that night in Los Angeles. The only player on either team whom either one of them had ever had trouble with was Abdul-Jabbar. Two years earlier, at the end of a frustrating loss in Boston, Abdul-Jabbar had yelled at Rakel that he was a racist as they left the court. Several writers heard the comment and wrote about it. The next time Rakel had a game in Los Angeles, Abdul-Jabbar approached him during warm-ups.

  “I owe you an apology,” he said. “I was out of line in Boston. I got frustrated and said something I shouldn’t have said.”

  “Apology accepted, Kareem,” Rakel said. “But I’d like you to do something for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Get on the PA system and repeat what you just said, so as many people will know about the apology as know about the original statement.”

  Abdul-Jabbar shook his head. “I can’t do that, Bob.”

  “The strange thing is, I never had a problem with Kareem before that night in Boston or after that night,” Rakel said. “I wasn’t going to let it affect the way I worked his games. But obviously I remembered it.”

  The December 9 game was the first between the teams that season. They were scheduled to meet again the following Wednesday in Houston. The Lakers were 9–14 and had another game at home on Sunday night, against the Buffalo Braves. Then they would fly to New Orleans to play the Jazz. The Rockets had a brutal weekend ahead. From L.A. they would fly first thing Saturday morning to Phoenix to play the Suns and then fly from there to a game in Seattle on Sunday. The Rockets had won three of four since Nissalke’s lineup changes but were still just 9–13.

  The Lakers would have 58 games left on their regular-season schedule after the game with the Rockets. The Rockets would have 59 games left.

  In 1977 the Los Angeles Forum, modestly known as the Fabulous Forum and then, when the corporate pox took over arenas, as the Great Western Forum, was one of the NBA showplaces. It had opened in December of 1967, and Jack Kent Cooke, who owned both the Lakers and the Los Angeles Kings of the National Hockey League, had come up with the idea of moving the media, which traditionally sat courtside directly across from the team benches and the scorer’s table, upstairs. That allowed him to put in a row of seats that was practically inbounds. The seats were almost always occupied by celebrities and CEOs. Among the first to buy one was Doris Day.

  Today every NBA arena is set up this way, and sitting in the front row is a sign of having made it in most NBA cities. Front-row tickets in the Lakers’ current home, the Staples Center, now cost $1,200 a game, more during the playoffs, when people know that sitting there almost guarantees that you will be seen on national television.

  Back then the NBA wasn’t nearly the glitz-factory it is now. There was one national TV contract—with CBS—that called for a Sunday Game of the Week and very few other exposures. There were no national cable networks. Playoff ratings had been so low the past few seasons that CBS was on the verge of taking all playoff games—even the finals—out of prime time and airing them at 11:30 P.M. on videotape.

  The best players in the league were not exactly fan-friendly. One was Abdul-Jabbar, a reticent superstar who had converted to the Muslim faith and changed his name from Lew Alcindor in 1971, after he and the Milwaukee Bucks had won the NBA title in his second season in the league. His conversion did not sit particularly well with a public that, a year later, would overwhelmingly elect Richard Nixon to a second term as president. Bill Walton’s politics weren’t any more popular with most NBA fans than Abdul-Jabbar’s. He was considered a radical and had a number of friends, notably sports activist and counterculture figure Jack Scott, known for their leftwing positions on many issues, including the legalization of marijuana and other drugs.

  Walton and the Trail Blazers had won the NBA title in 1977 and were dominating the league again early in the 1977–78 season. The once-proud Boston Celtics, who had been led to titles in 1974 and 1976 by center Dave Cowens, were struggling. John Havlicek, the last star left from the Bill Russell era, was planning to retire at the end of the season. The great New York Knicks teams of the early 1970s were long gone, leaving the 76ers and the Washington Bullets, a solid but unexciting team, as the best teams in the east.

  Player salaries had escalated, but they hadn’t yet exploded. Rudy Tomjanovich, a four-time All-Star, was making $300,000 a year. Kermit Washington, in the final year of a five-year contract he had signed as the number five pick in the 1973 NBA draft, was making $120,000. Most coaches in the league made less than six figures. There was talk of franchises folding, especially when the league expanded by four teams in 1976, adding the Indiana Pacers, New York Nets, San Antonio Spurs, and Denver Nuggets from the ABA in order to make the ABA go away. That meant there were twenty-two teams, too many for a league where revenues were spiraling downward.

  The Lakers had come into the league as the Minneapolis Lakers—thus the name—in 1949 and had moved to Los Angeles in 1960. They had been a power in the league throughout the sixties, led by Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, and later Wilt Chamberlain. But they couldn’t get over the mountain that was the Boston Celtics, losing to Bill Russell’s team four times in the finals. But in 1972, the year after Baylor retired, they became the league’s dominant team, winning a record 33 straight games en route to a 69–13 regular-season record. They then rolled through the playoffs, beating the Knicks in the finals in five games, avenging a wrenching seven-game defeat to New York in the 1970 finals. The Lakers made the finals again the following year, but this time the Knicks won in five games. Chamberlain, though still a dominant player, retired.

  Looking for help inside, the Lakers drafted Washington, who had averaged 20 points and 20 rebounds a game during his senior year at American University. Pete Newell was the Lakers’ general manager and Bill Sharman was the coach. Scouting in those days wasn’t nearly as sophisticated as it is now. “You depended a lot on the college coaches to te
ll you the truth about someone’s character,” Sharman said. “I remember when we were back east going to see Kermit play at American. Two things stood out—he was a very strong rebounder, but you could figure that out looking at a stat sheet. The second thing you had to see: he was great at turning to throw the outlet pass, and when he wanted to, he could throw the ball the length of the court as if it was a baseball. That got my attention.

  “Then, when we talked to the coaches about him, we heard he was a terrific youngster, good student, really good character. We knew we were going to be rebuilding. Elgin and Wilt were gone; Jerry was going to be gone soon. He seemed like a good block to put into place for a long time to come.”

  Newell had been a great college coach, leading the University of California to a national title in 1959 and the national championship game a year later before retiring at the age of forty-two. (“The pressure was too much,” he said. “I was smoking so much I was afraid I was going to burn the building down during practice.”) He was also impressed with Washington’s strength, but what he liked most was his work ethic.

  “He wasn’t a smooth player by any means, and he certainly wasn’t a shooter,” he said. “But he was clearly someone who was going to work hard and get better. We figured anyone who could leap as quickly as he could and throw the outlet pass the way he did could learn to shoot the ball. That could be taught.”

  The Lakers took Washington with the fifth pick in the first round, a pick they had acquired in a trade with the woeful Cleveland Cavaliers. A year later West followed Baylor and Chamberlain into retirement. His departure was something of a relief to Washington, who was terrified of him. “I was completely intimidated by him in practice,” he said. “He was so competitive and so intense that I was scared to make a mistake. Since I was a rookie, I made them all the time. It was embarrassing.”

  After the Lakers had struggled during West’s final year and been worse the next year, Sharman and Newell knew they had to make some kind of major move to improve the team. Even though the Lakers had been to the finals five times in six years from 1968 through 1973, Jack Kent Cooke was a demanding owner who wouldn’t put up with mediocrity for very long. Abdul-Jabbar was unhappy in Milwaukee, and the Bucks were looking to move him—but only in return for a lot of players.

  “Looking back, the deal seems like it would have been automatic from our point of view,” Sharman said. “But I had doubts, almost everyone on our staff had doubts. We were giving up a lot. The one who pushed for the deal was Pete. Thank goodness we listened to him in the end.”

  In the end Abdul-Jabbar came to the Lakers for four good players: Junior Bridgeman, Brian Winters, David Meyers, and Elmore Smith. No one was more thrilled with the deal than Washington. “All through college the person whose picture I had on my desk was Kareem,” he said. “He was my hero, the player I wanted to be like most if I could. Now I was going to get a chance to play next to him. It was literally a dream come true.”

  How much he would actually get to play next to Abdul-Jabbar was a different question. Adjusting to the NBA had not been easy for Washington, specifically the part about moving from center to forward. In college he had been able to camp out in the low post and overpower people. If he missed a shot, he beat people to the boards with his quickness. But in the NBA he had to play farther from the basket, and at 6-8 he couldn’t just jump over people. He was a suspect shooter and teams knew that, making him an offensive liability.

  As a rookie he had only played in 45 of the Lakers’ 82 games, averaging less than 10 minutes per outing in the games he appeared in. It got a little better the next season: 55 games, almost 18 minutes a game. Most of his points came off offensive rebounds. The first year with Abdul-Jabbar, things got worse. He was fighting injuries, sore knees and a bad back, and played in only 36 games. He wasn’t anywhere close to being the player either he or the Lakers had envisioned when he had been drafted. There were still two years left on his contract, but Washington was certain that if he didn’t show marked improvement in his fourth season, he would be long gone, since the fifth year was an option year. There was no salary cap at the time, and Jack Kent Cooke had plenty of money, but he wasn’t about to pay $120,000 to a player who was producing at the rate Washington had produced during his first three seasons in the league.

  “I knew I had to do something,” Washington said. “I was miserable. Basketball had become who I was; it was my identity and I was failing. I was willing to do anything to get better. The question was, what could I do?”

  The person who came up with a potential solution was Michael Cardozo. At the time, Cardozo worked for the law firm that represented Washington: Dell, Fentress, and Craighill. Donald Dell, the one-time Davis Cup tennis team captain, who had gotten into the business of player representation a few years earlier, had been one of four agents Washington had interviewed during his senior year of college. “I wasn’t crazy about any of them,” he said. “But I was most comfortable with Donald.”

  Cardozo, who would leave the law firm a year later to become general counsel in the Carter administration, handled legal affairs for Dell’s clients. When Washington told him he was at a loss to figure out how to become a better NBA player, Cardozo made a suggestion: go talk to Pete Newell. “The idea was that Pete had been a great college coach,” Cardozo said. “If he was willing to work with Kermit, he could teach him fundamentals, especially on offense, where he needed help most.”

  Newell’s role with the Lakers had changed by then. Sharman had been forced to retire as coach after the 1976 season because he was having throat problems that made it almost impossible for him to talk. Jerry West replaced him as coach, and Sharman became general manager. Newell was pushed out of the general manager’s job and named a “consultant.” In a sense, that was a huge break for Washington, because Newell had time on his hands. When Washington approached him, Newell was skeptical at first but agreed to work with him.

  “We’ll meet at seven o’clock in the morning,” he told Washington, figuring if he wasn’t sincere about working hard the starting time would scare him off.

  “I’ll pick you up,” said Washington, who lived a few blocks from Newell.

  They worked five mornings a week that summer in the gym at Loyola Marymount University. Newell worked on Washington’s footwork and taught him how to turn, face, and shoot, drilling him over and over and over. Washington was exhausted. “It was a living nightmare,” he says now, repeating one of his favorite phrases.

  But by the time training camp began, Washington was a different player. West, the new coach, had made it clear during the off-season that he wanted Washington traded. It was time to admit the team had made a mistake drafting him so high, time to see what they could get for him and move on. But West was impressed by the “new” Kermit Washington. He was quicker, he could handle the ball better, and he could even hit the occasional short jump shot, which made his inside game much more effective. By the end of training camp Washington was in the playing rotation.

  The first 55 games of that season were everything Washington had always hoped his NBA career would be. He was playing regularly, getting a little bit less than 30 minutes per game. He was averaging 9.7 points and 9.3 rebounds, second in rebounding on the team, behind only Abdul-Jabbar. The team was playing superbly and Washington was a key element, especially defensively and on the boards. “He was important to us for a number of reasons, not the least of which was taking inside pressure off of Kareem,” West said.

  Not to mention defensive pressure. More often than not, Washington would guard the other team’s best inside player, since the Lakers didn’t want Abdul-Jabbar risking foul trouble. That was fine with him. As long as he was playing, he was happy.

  The only problem was his knees. Washington had been a remarkably durable player in college, missing just one game. But he had taken a hard fall in an exhibition game as a rookie, landing hard on his tailbone (aka, his butt). He didn’t think much about it and took no time off. Eventually
he began to feel back pain on a regular basis, and when he didn’t get that treated, running differently because of the pain eventually led to a throbbing pain in both knees.

  “As a rookie, you just didn’t go in and ask for time off because you were sore,” he said. “A lot of guys played with pain. I wasn’t even playing that much, so I certainly wasn’t going to ask for time off from practice, because that was the only time I got to play, really. Looking back it wasn’t very smart, but at the time it felt like the only thing to do.”

  Not playing very much kept the knee problem from worsening. But when he began playing 30 minutes per night, Washington could feel the pain in his knees, especially the right knee, more and more as the season wore on. Driving to the Forum for the team’s last game before the All-Star break, he said to Pat, his wife, “If I can just get through tonight and rest for the next four days, I think I’ll be fine.”

  He didn’t get through that night. Late in the second quarter, on a drive to the basket, he felt the knee go completely. “I could feel it tearing inside,” he said. “I looked down, and my kneecap was hanging on the side of my leg.”

  They carried him off. He had surgery the next day. Then came rehab and another summer at Loyola Marymount with Newell. “I had come too far to not make it all the way back,” he said. “Pete worked me even harder than the first summer. But I knew it would be worth it.”

  It was. Even though the team had struggled without Abdul-Jabbar, Washington had flourished. Through 23 games, he was fourth in the league in rebounding, with slightly more than 11 per game. Now Abdul-Jabbar was back and everyone expected the Lakers to make a move in the standings. Houston and Buffalo at home on a Friday and a Sunday certainly appeared to be an excellent starting point.

  While Washington was fighting to establish himself as a solid NBA player, Rudy Tomjanovich had no such problems. He was in his eighth season in the league and had played in the last four All-Star games. After averaging 30 points a game during his senior year at Michigan, he had been the number two pick in the 1970 draft, taken behind St. Bonaventure center Bob Lanier but ahead of Pete Maravich, college basketball’s all-time leading scorer. There were a lot of raised eyebrows in San Diego when the Rockets chose Tomjanovich ahead of Maravich, especially since the flashy Maravich would, if nothing else, put people into seats for a franchise struggling to survive.