The Punch

by John Feinstein

  “I got recognized a lot more, that’s for sure,” he said. “Before, if I did get recognized, it was just as a basketball player. Now I had people coming up and saying, ‘You look familiar.’ Then a look would come over their faces and they’d say, ‘Wait a minute, aren’t you the guy who got nailed?’”

  Washington was in San Diego; Tomjanovich was in Houston. But in a very real sense, they were living with each other. Both hoped that would change with time.

  The team that Tomjanovich returned to in the fall of 1978 was different from the one he had left the previous December. John Lucas and Kevin Kunnert were gone and Tomjanovich’s new partner at the forward spot was Rick Barry. At first Tomjanovich wondered how he and Barry would fit in with one another, since both were scorers. But he was pleasantly surprised to find that Barry was a gifted passer and had reached a point in his career where he didn’t mind using his passing skills as much as his shooting skills.

  Even so, the team wasn’t the same. His buddy Calvin Murphy was still there, and so were Moses Malone and Mike Newlin, who was still miserable playing for Nissalke but, like everyone else, thrilled to see Tomjanovich back, looking different but healthy.

  “Rudy did look different after all the surgeries,” Newlin said. “His features were, I think, sharper before. It was as if his face had been rounded off in places. He sounded a little different too. I think that had something to do with the damage to his nose. But he was still Rudy, and he was still a good player.”

  The team’s big problem was simple: with Lucas gone there was no true point guard. Lucas was the kind of pass-first, shoot-second point guard whom players like Murphy, Tomjanovich, and Malone thrived with. They all knew that if they could get open, the ball would get to them. Knowing he had to have someone to replace Lucas, Ray Patterson made a deal with Seattle that brought Slick Watts to the team. Watts was very strong and could get in the lane and create openings that way, but he wasn’t Lucas.

  Tomjanovich’s concern about being under constant scrutiny was legitimate. He kept telling people that as far as he was concerned, the incident was behind him. He had dealt with all the physical pain, he had gone through all the surgeries and all the rehab, and he just wanted to be a basketball player again. But it wasn’t that simple. The court case still loomed in the future. Tomjanovich and the Rockets had decided to go ahead and sue the Lakers, and the case was due to reach the courts the following summer. There was also the issue of Washington and Tomjanovich being back on the same court again. That initial meeting was scheduled to take place in Houston in November. This time there were no plans for Washington to pass on the trip.

  Tomjanovich had almost consciously not thought about Washington for months after the injury. He had taken Toffel’s advice to heart and had tried not to concern himself with anything but his health. What’s more, whenever he was asked if he had any comment on Washington’s reinstatement by O’Brien or on the incident itself, he could honestly say that because of the ongoing litigation, he wasn’t in a position to comment.

  The basketball court, however, would be different. Washington was starting for the Clippers, so there would be no getting around the two of them coming face-to-face at some point. Neither man was looking forward to the meeting, because neither had any idea what to say. Both knew there would be loads of media attention paid to their first on-court reunion and there was no way to avoid that.

  “It was more like something that I just didn’t have time to deal with or think about than anything I was actually dreading,” Tomjanovich said. “I felt kind of caught in between. On the one hand, I was moving on with my life, I was healthy and playing again. On the other hand, this kept coming up in different ways over and over. I knew there was no way to avoid dealing with the lawsuit, but I was hoping once that was over, that would be it—regardless of the outcome, that would be the final sentence to the story.”

  Washington felt the same way. He knew the lawsuit was still out there, but he had hoped once the suspension was lifted that he could resume his life as it had been before the incident. To a large degree, that was the way it had been in Boston. Yes, there were warnings about being careful in crowds and extra security, but none of his teammates brought it up, and after the initial flurry upon his arrival in Boston, it had become a nonfactor with the media there.

  But now Tomjanovich was back playing basketball, and their paths had to cross. “I almost wished,” Washington said, “that there was some way for us to go off and meet in private, talk the whole thing out, get it over with that way. That way when the media asked us about it, we could say that we’d talked, I had told Rudy how sorry I was he got hurt, and we were both ready to move on with our careers and our lives. But it wasn’t going to be that simple. Life is never that simple.”

  17

  Life Goes On

  Kermit Washington was devastated when he heard he wasn’t going to be a Boston Celtic for the 1978–79 season. He had felt so comfortable with the Celtics, and he knew he had a protector in Auerbach, who would see to it that he was treated as fairly as possible, especially in Boston.

  But if he couldn’t be with the Celtics, San Diego was about as nice an alternative as he was likely to find. The city was less than a hundred miles from Los Angeles, where he had lived for five years. The winter weather was nicer than L.A.’s and, of course, light years from Boston’s. “The city, I knew, would be great,” he said. “It was the team I wasn’t sure about. It was all unknown—all over again.”

  One known was that he and Kevin Kunnert were going to be teammates. Kunnert was as surprised as Washington when he learned that he was going to be a Clipper and not a Celtic. There had been no rumors at all of any kind of swap before it was announced. Kunnert had signed with the Celtics for the simple reason that they had made the best offer—five years at $300,000 per year. Since he had never played for the Celtics, Kunnert had less reason to be upset about landing in San Diego. He didn’t know any of the players or the coaches or Auerbach.

  “Signing with them was just a business deal,” he said. “It was the best opportunity for me. If I ended up in San Diego, that was okay too.”

  Neither Washington nor Kunnert was thrilled to end up on the same team as the other, but neither thought that much of it at the time. Both were occupied with trying to relocate their families and with getting used to a new city, a new team, and a new coach. The incident was nine months behind them when they got to training camp, and both assumed that the worst was over.

  “I never dreamed,” Kunnert said years later, “that it would still be an issue more than twenty years later. The guy has never been able to let it go.”

  “I haven’t let it go,” Washington said, “because the world hasn’t let me go.”

  Back then everything was new for everyone in San Diego. Gene Shue had been hired to coach the team, given the job of blending the old Celtics and the old Braves into the new Clippers.

  Things did not start well, as might be expected when remnants of two teams were suddenly forced to behave like one team. No one seemed certain of their role. The team had talent, especially in the backcourt, with All-Star Randy Smith and scoring machine World B. Free, who never shot unless he actually had the ball in his hands. Swen Nater was a solid center, Washington and Kunnert both contributed rebounding and good defense, and Nick Weatherspoon brought experience to the small forward spot.

  But that didn’t prevent an awful 2–12 start. Washington was miserable. He didn’t feel as if he fit in with the new team, and he was convinced things weren’t going to get better anytime soon. He was so discouraged that he actually called team owner Irv Levin and told him to cut him. “You don’t have to pay me,” he told Levin. “Forget about the contract. I’ll just walk away. None of us deserve to be paid.”

  Levin may have appreciated the gesture, but he wasn’t cutting his starting power forward. He told Washington things were going to get better, that he just needed to be patient and give the team time to jell. Washington calmed do
wn.

  “Maybe I was just jumpy because of everything that had gone on,” he said. “Remember, in less than a year I had been on three teams, been suspended, wondered if I’d ever play again, and been made into this villain. The good news was, Mr. Levin was right— we did get better.”

  Things didn’t get better right away. There was still the not-so-small matter of being on the same court as Rudy Tomjanovich and the Rockets. Washington was almost relieved that the first meeting would be in Houston. “I figured we might as well get the whole thing over with,” he said. “I thought, maybe, just maybe, once that game was over, we could finally put the whole thing behind us. Wrong.”

  Tomjanovich had made his official return to action in New York on October 13, against the Knicks. He had received a standing ovation when he was introduced—and cringed when he heard the cheers—and then had played well, scoring 20 points and getting 6 assists (which had to be close to a career high) and 5 rebounds in 40 minutes. The Rockets won, 111–107, and Tomjanovich felt he had passed another test.

  “Being back in an actual NBA game made it real,” he said. “Now no one could say that the punch had ended my career.”

  On the night that the Clippers came to Houston—November 11—Tom Nissalke was in his locker room early when Gene Shue came to see him. “Maybe there’s a way to defuse this a little bit,” he said. “Maybe after they’re introduced, before the tip, we could get Kermit and Rudy to shake hands, kind of symbolically put an end to the whole thing for everyone to see.”

  These days, the five starters from each team routinely shake hands with one another as they gather around the center jump circle. (The tradition reached a unique height of absurdity during the finals in 1989, when Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas exchanged pre-tipoff kisses.) In the seventies, if the two centers shook hands it was unusual. Players simply weren’t as collegial then as now.

  “If you knew a guy from having played on the same team with him or something, you might do it,” Washington said. “But otherwise you just lined up and played. Period.”

  Nissalke wondered if the handshake idea came from Shue or Washington (Washington says he knew nothing of it), but he was almost certain that Tomjanovich wouldn’t go for it. “My first thought was that Rudy probably wasn’t ready to shake hands with the guy,” he said. “My second thought was that by doing it, we’d be calling attention to it all over again, and that was the last thing in the world Rudy wanted to do. My third thought was that doing it might be a little bit phony, especially since there was still a lawsuit pending, and Rudy would never be involved with anything that was the least bit phony.”

  Nonetheless, Nissalke told Shue he would ask Tomjanovich how he felt about it when he arrived at the arena and let him know. He did just that. The conversation was brief. “No,” Tomjanovich said. “Shake hands? I just don’t think we should do that. I just don’t think I want to do that.”

  Nissalke didn’t press the issue. He simply went and told Shue what Tomjanovich had said. To this day, Tomjanovich swears he remembers nothing about that night. He doesn’t remember Nissalke asking about the proposed handshake, what he thought about in pregame, what the crowd was like, or what happened in the game. “It’s all a blank,” he said. “Maybe I was so pent up about it when it happened that I blocked it from my memory. I honestly don’t remember a thing.”

  Washington’s memory is clearer. “I remember,” he said, “that he killed me and everyone else on the team all night. He was great. In a way I was happy for him. I was just unhappy with myself, because for the first time in my life I was intimidated. I let the whole circumstance get to me: the crowd, facing Rudy, knowing that every-one was watching us. I’ve had games in my life where I’ve been outplayed badly. But that night I was embarrassed.”

  The numbers back Washington up: Tomjanovich had 24 points and 11 rebounds in 33 minutes. Washington had 6 points and 2 rebounds in 23 minutes. Shue didn’t play him much in the second half because he could see that he wasn’t himself. Tomjanovich sat out most of the fourth quarter because the game was a rout. The Rockets, with the crowd creating an atmosphere not seen in the Summit since the conference finals in 1977, dominated the game, winning 136–123. “It was a long night,” Washington said. “I think the best way to sum it up is to say I couldn’t do anything right and Rudy couldn’t do anything wrong. I guess in a way there was some poetic justice in that. I didn’t like getting hammered on that way, but I was glad to see that he seemed to have all his game back.”

  Tomjanovich was in fact playing very good basketball, better than almost anyone could have reasonably hoped. Everyone in the league was aware of what had happened to him, and wherever the Rockets went on the road, he received a standing ovation when he was introduced. Tomjanovich had been prepared for—had looked forward to—a warm reception in the Summit. He had not expected, or wanted, anything along those lines on the road. He had hoped to be treated like any other visiting player, much the way Washington hoped to be treated like any other visiting player, although for entirely different reasons. As the season wore on, it became apparent to both men that no one had forgotten what had happened and that, try as they might, they weren’t about to put the punch behind them just by telling people it was behind them.

  Most people would have found the warm reaction from road crowds flattering or touching or both. Not Tomjanovich. “I always thought they were clapping for me out of pity,” he said. “That was the last thing I wanted. When I heard the applause, all I could think was, ‘They’re clapping because I got nailed, because they saw the tape. I don’t want this. I just want to play.’”

  No one else saw it that way. “My thought was that they were applauding his courage,” Nissalke said. “They had seen the tape, and they knew how awful his injuries were. The fact that he was back playing and playing well was a remarkable achievement. A lot of guys in his situation would have just taken the insurance and given it up. Rudy probably would have made more collecting insurance than he did by coming back to play. It would have been a lot easier. But that was never his way. He never took the easy way on anything.”

  And he was never easy on himself—to put it mildly. A few people in basketball had publicly criticized Tomjanovich for coming up behind Washington in the middle of a fight, saying he had made a mistake in thinking that someone engaged in a fight the way Washington was would not turn and throw a punch at someone coming from behind. Most notable in this group was Wes Unseld, the great center for the Washington Bullets.

  “I was the peacemaker in a lot of fights,” said Unseld, who was one of the strongest men to ever play the game and could end a fight simply by stepping between the combatants. “I always took the approach that if you are going to be a peacemaker, you have to be prepared to be involved in a fight, because you are dealing with people who are wound up and angry. They may not stop just because you want them to stop. There’s no one I respect more in the game than Rudy Tomjanovich, but he got himself into something he wasn’t prepared for. He made a mistake running in the way he did. That doesn’t mean he deserved to pay the price he paid—no one deserves anything like that. He was certainly the victim of something horrible. But regardless of his intentions—and I assume they were good and peaceful—he isn’t blameless in what happened.”

  Most people who either witnessed the fight or saw the tape of it would disagree with Unseld. “He was the captain of the team,” Red Auerbach said. “He saw one of his guys in trouble and he went to help. I don’t blame a guy for that.”

  “He looked up and saw Kunnert caught in between the two biggest, strongest Lakers on the floor,” said Ted Green of the L.A. Times. “What was he supposed to do—nothing? His guy is clearly in trouble. He came in to help. People talk about Kermit reacting instinctively—I have no doubt that he did. So did Rudy.”

  There’s one person who tends to side with Unseld: Tomjanovich. “When I’ve thought about it, I’ve thought that I made a mistake running into a fight with my hands down,” he said. “
I know why my hands were down—because fighting wasn’t on my mind, breaking it up was. But it was an adrenaline situation, and I didn’t take that into account. I should have been better prepared to defend myself, just in case.”

  Tomjanovich had been in one fight in his NBA career prior to that night, and it had shaken him. It was in his second season, the team’s first in Houston, in a game in the Astrodome against the Atlanta Hawks. He got tangled up with Hawks center Bob Christian, and the next thing he knew the two of them were swinging at each other.

  “I had the ball and he tried to reach around me in a kind of bear hug and take it away,” Tomjanovich remembered. “I held on, and he started kind of pushing and shoving and then took a swing. We were right in front of their bench, and I remember thinking, ‘I gotta get out of here.’ The next thing I knew, I’d thrown about two or three punches and he was swinging at me and I could hear the crowd oohing and aahing like we were gladiators or something. Then people came in and broke it up.

  “It was amazing to me how quickly you kind of lose control in a situation like that. Your adrenaline gets going and you are doing things you know you shouldn’t do. When it was over, I felt ashamed of myself for losing it that way. That memory stayed with me quite clearly. I didn’t want it to happen again.”

  Tomjanovich’s fight with Christian was nothing more than a minor NBA skirmish. Neither player was ejected. “Back then, no way you’d be ejected,” he said. “Today, ejection, suspension, and fine. Automatic.”

  The sight of Kunnert and Washington skirmishing on the fateful night in 1977 did not conjure up any memories of his own fight. “It was nothing like that,” he said, “except in the sense that my reaction was instinctive, not thought out. I saw a fight, I thought my guy was in trouble, and I ran in to try to help break it up.”