The Punch

by John Feinstein

  “Reading this book you would think that Washington was completely innocent that night and that I was this big dope from Iowa who picked a fight with him,” Kunnert said. “To this day every time I look at that book, I feel sick to my stomach. He just bought into the entire Saint Kermit story. Please.”

  Whether Halberstam bought in or not doesn’t really matter at this point. What matters now—as it did then—is that the book ratcheted up the harsh feelings between Kunnert and Washington. By the time the book appeared, the incident was four years old. But it still wasn’t over.

  18

  Time to Move On

  If you accept the history of the Houston Rockets according to Calvin Murphy, the beginning of the end for “his” Rockets came on June 7, 1979. That was the day Del Harris succeeded Tom Nissalke as the team’s coach.

  Harris had been Nissalke’s assistant and was the players’ choice to succeed Nissalke, who had been fired by George Maloof, the Rockets’ fifth owner since 1971. Maloof came in intending to make sweeping changes but eventually decided to retain Ray Patterson as general manager. Nissalke wasn’t as lucky. According to Tomjanovich, Maloof initially wanted to hire Norm Ellenberger, who had been the coach at the University of New Mexico when the Lobos had been the target of a major NCAA investigation. But after talking with a number of players, he was persuaded to hire Harris, in large part because he was given a lot of the credit for turning Moses Malone into a star.

  Tomjanovich had been able to get through his first season back after the punch with only one injury problem, the broken nose. But the following season, injuries began plaguing him. He had some groin miseries and a recurring problem with his right arch. “The only way for it to heal completely,” he said, “was to stop playing. I wanted to play.” He could feel his body slowing. He had never been quick, but now he felt a half-step slower. He couldn’t jump the way he once had. Whether the injuries he had suffered in Los Angeles were connected is impossible to tell. But at thirty-one, a player with Tomjanovich’s work ethic should have been at the peak of his career, not on the downside.

  “You’ll never be able to tell me that everything his body went through trying to recover from all those injuries didn’t shorten his career,” Mike Newlin said. “The fact that he came back to play the way he did is a tribute to Rudy. But sooner or later it was going to catch up to him.”

  That had been the crux of the testimony almost everyone associated with the Rockets had given during the civil trial that was held in Houston in the summer of 1979. One by one players and coaches who had been involved in the game were called to testify. One by one they recounted the harrowing facts. Sitting in the courtroom, looking at the six-person jury, Kermit Washington had one thought: “We have no chance.”

  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar agreed. Abdul-Jabbar was probably the only witness in the case whose testimony backed Washington in any way. He testified that he had seen Kunnert punch Washington before Washington squared off and punched Kunnert. “I was very concerned about how the trial would come out for Kermit,” he said years later. “I just didn’t feel a black man in the state of Texas being sued by a white man stood much chance of getting a fair trial.”

  Technically Washington wasn’t being sued; the Lakers were. While that gave Washington relief from any financial liability, it made sitting in the courtroom and listening to the lawyers that much harder to take. “The whole trial was about the Lakers’ failure to control me, to train me, to keep me from injuring people,” he said. “It sounded as if they were describing the behavior of some kind of animal. Then whenever I would see their lawyers in the hallway they would say, ‘Hello, Mr. Washington, how are you, Mr. Washington?’ It was infuriating. I’m not even sure why I was there at all. The whole thing was a sham.”

  One reason he was there was to testify. On the second day of the trial, Tomjanovich testified. Over objections from the defense, the jury was shown film of the punch and slides of what Tomjanovich looked like when he arrived at the hospital that night. While the film and the slides were shown, Tomjanovich sat in his chair and looked into the distance, away from the screen. “I didn’t need to see it again,” he said. “That was a long two weeks. I knew why we were there, but I didn’t like being there anyway.”

  Toffel testified in detail about the nature of Tomjanovich’s injuries. Most important, he testified that in spite of the surgeries and pain he had already been through, Tomjanovich was likely to face recurring sinus headaches in the future, could lose his sense of smell, and would probably have serious dental problems because of the damage done to his gums. He also said that Tomjanovich’s face, though repaired, would never be the same again.

  “It will never be the same the rest of his life,” he said. “The scar tissue will never be quite as strong as it was in its original state.”

  Toffel and Tomjanovich were followed by all the players and coaches present that night. Most damaging to Washington may have been the testimony of referee Bob Rakel, who said he had not seen Kunnert throw an elbow or a punch before he and Washington squared off. He remembered skirmishing, first between Abdul-Jabbar and Kunnert and then between Washington and Kunnert, but he said he had not seen either the punch Abdul-Jabbar described or the elbows Washington described.

  Not surprisingly, the angriest testimony came from Kunnert, who, under questioning from Robert Dunn, the Lakers’ lawyer, said he had not thrown an elbow at Washington’s head or a punch of any kind and that any testimony to that effect was a lie. When his turn came, Washington repeated his story about Kunnert elbowing him. He also said he had no idea who it was running at him from behind and he had reacted instinctively and was very sorry for the injuries Tomjanovich had received.

  At no point during the two-week trial did Tomjanovich and Washington make eye contact or exchange so much as a hello.

  It took the jury five hours to return a verdict. Tomjanovich had asked for a total of $2.6 million in actual and punitive damages from the Lakers. The jury decided that wasn’t quite enough. It awarded Tomjanovich just under $3.25 million—$1.746 million in actual damages and $1.5 million in punitive damages.

  “I was shocked,” Tomjanovich said, shaking his head twenty-two years after the trial.

  “I wasn’t,” Washington said, smiling.

  Whether Abdul-Jabbar’s assessment of a Texas jury was correct or Washington’s initial belief that he and the Lakers had “no chance,” it certainly didn’t make anyone on either side happy when U.S. District Court judge John V. Singleton informed the lawyers shortly after reading the verdict that “at least” two of the six jurors had asked if Tomjanovich could autograph their copies of the court’s legal instructions.

  There would be an appeal, and even though the $3.25 million figure was imposing, there was no way of knowing if or when Tomjanovich would collect any of the money. As it turned out, the two sides eventually agreed to a $2 million settlement before the case was heard on appeal. Under the agreement, most of the money was placed in an annuity that was set up for the Tomjanovich children.

  Starstruck jurors or no starstruck jurors, there was no doubting the seriousness of Tomjanovich’s injuries. Toffel’s calm, detailed account, and the film and the slides and the parade of witnesses who all essentially said it was the worst thing they had ever seen in their lives, certainly worked against Washington. The jury was asked to decide damages, not intent.

  There was absolutely no doubting the damage that had been suffered.

  By both men.

  In his autobiography Tomjanovich ends the chapter on the 1977–78 season with this summation: “The Washington incident cast a shadow over the entire 1977–78 season, and when Malone and Newlin were injured in the second half of the season, we plummeted to a 28–54 record…. The Washington saga didn’t really end until the fall of 1979, when I was awarded a multimillion-dollar settlement following a court case in Houston.”

  That reference to the “Washington saga” appears on page 107. In the 178 pages that follow, Kermit
Washington’s name appears one more time—when Tomjanovich discusses people wanting to bring up the “Washington episode” throughout his comeback season. “I learned,” he wrote, “to tolerate these sorts of comments.”

  No doubt both he and Washington had hoped the court case would be the end of the saga. Both soon learned that it wasn’t. By the end of the 1980 season, Tomjanovich suspected his career was beginning to wind down. He hoped the injuries that had slowed him during the season would prove to be just an interlude, not a beginning. But he knew that he had only been able to start 50 games, and as Toffel had predicted, he was still dealing with pounding sinus headaches and pain in his teeth. Beyond that, he had gone from being a great sleeper to a poor one. Part of that was the recurring vision of his own death; part of it was general discomfort.

  Washington had found comfort in Portland, even more so than in Boston or San Diego. Portland was the smallest market in the NBA, with a population of slightly more than 500,000. The Blazers’ championship in 1977 had cemented them as icons in the community. If you played for the Blazers, you were almost automatically a hero in Portland. Washington’s hardworking style of play, his easygoing manner away from the court, and his willingness to show up and play every night without complaining about his role or his salary made him popular with the fans, who sold out the Portland Civic Center—12,666—every single night the Blazers played.

  It wasn’t as if the Tomjanovich incident had gone away. But at that stage of his life, Washington felt as if it was receding and assumed that sooner or later it would be all but forgotten. “I had paid the price for making a mistake,” he said. “I had been suspended and fined; I had been threatened and cursed. I had been through the humiliation of the trial and walked away with whatever label the jury’s verdict could put on you. It still came up when we went on the road, and it still came up in the media. I began to think my actual name was ‘Kermit Washington, who in December of 1977 threw the punch that almost killed Rudy Tomjanovich…’

  “But in Portland, I was just Kermit Washington, basketball player. People were nice to my family, I felt as if I belonged in the community. It was a happy time.”

  During that first season in Portland, after injuries had knocked a couple of players off the Western Conference All-Star team, he was chosen to play in the All-Star game. Remarkably, just as Tomjanovich had gone home to Detroit for the 1979 game, Washington went home to Washington for the 1980 game. When American University learned he was going to be in town for the three-day All-Star weekend, it made arrangements to retire his number 24 uniform in a ceremony at the Fort the night before the All-Star game.

  Slowly but surely, it seemed, Washington’s life was being put back together, piece by piece. In 1980–81 he was named team captain. He had what had become for him a typical season, averaging 11.4 points per game and 9.4 rebounds on a solid Portland team that finished 45–37. The only negative was the recurring pain he was feeling in his back and knees. The more he played, the more pain he felt, but that, he knew, was inevitable. “I would rather deal with the pain and play,” he said, “than not play.”

  He had to sit out nine games during that season but was nonetheless an integral part of the Blazers. Kevin Kunnert was also playing in pain: his reconstructed knee had never completely healed. Even so he managed to play in 55 games that season, although his minutes (16) points (4.4) and rebounds (5.1) were way down from his healthy, halcyon days in Houston.

  “I could never really jump, run, or move the same way after I had the surgery,” he said. “I had the long-term contract, so I was going to be paid regardless of whether I played or not. But I felt an obligation to at least try to play, to earn the money I was being paid. I never saw myself as a quitter.”

  The frosty relationship between Washington and Kunnert had grown even colder after the trial. That was understandable, since each had testified under oath that the other was a liar. In a sense, both were poster boys for the difficulty of NBA life. Both were only twenty-nine during the 1980–81 season (Washington would hit thirty in September 1981, Kunnert eight weeks later, in November), and yet both were hobbling around on the knees of old men, wondering how much longer they could play effectively, if at all.

  Rudy Tomjanovich, who was three years older, was dealing with the same thoughts and frustrations that season in Houston. Various injuries had slowed him too. Some nights he couldn’t play. That wasn’t the worst of it, though: as the season wore on, there were nights when he could play but, for the first time since his rookie year, the coach chose not to play him.

  The revamped Rockets had finished 41–41 in 1980. The following season, they continued to be a .500 team. Rick Barry had retired, leaving Tomjanovich without the guy most likely to get him the ball when he got open. In 1980 the Rockets had acquired 6-foot-11-inch Billy Paultz, nicknamed The Whopper, one of the sharpest, funniest men in the league. Paultz was one of those players who never overwhelmed anyone with his grace on the court or with his numbers but always seemed to play on winning teams. As the 1980–81 season went on, Del Harris began playing him more and more, paired inside with Moses Malone. Needing some speed up front, Harris usually went with young Robert Reid as the small forward. Often that left Tomjanovich out of the rotation.

  Calvin Murphy was going through similar frustrations in the backcourt. Lucas’s departure had started a lengthy search for a point guard. Slick Watts had been a stopgap in 1979. That summer Tom Henderson had been signed as a free agent and Allen Leavell had been picked up in the draft. Searching for the right combination, Harris began playing Henderson and Leavell together at the guard spots and bringing Murphy off the bench. As the season wore on, both Tomjanovich and Murphy saw their minutes dwindling. Murphy still played often as a regular part of the rotation but was not the least bit happy and—surprise—made it clear to everyone that he was not. Tomjanovich played much less and wasn’t happy either. Not surprisingly, he never complained.

  “That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt,” he said. “Del was very straight with me about it when he decided to play Billy more and me less. I appreciated that, but it was killing me to not play. Now, twenty years later, I can sit here and talk about it unemotionally and understand why Del did what he did. But back then it was brutal.”

  He found himself almost a full-time spectator for the first time since the Alex Hannum days in San Diego. The Rockets were again struggling to make the playoffs. Tomjanovich was in the uncomfortable position of wanting his team to win while knowing that any success they had made Harris’s decision to sit him look like the right one. He wondered what his future in Houston was going to be. He had two years left on his contract. At thirty-two, he was convinced he was too young to be finished as an effective basketball player.

  “It was a Catch-22,” he said. “I couldn’t stand not playing. But I couldn’t argue with the results we were getting with the new lineup.”

  His teammates didn’t like seeing him out of the rotation either. They went so far as to bring it up in team meetings. At one point during the playoffs, Tom Henderson stood up, pointed at Tomjanovich, and said, “Del, how can he not be playing? There’s no way I can believe he can’t help us.”

  Maybe he could have helped. But he didn’t get the chance. The 1981 playoffs made it clear that Tomjanovich’s days as a member of the Rockets’ regular rotation were probably behind him. Houston, now in the Western Conference, sneaked in by winning three of its last four games to finish 40–42 and then, led by Malone, got on one of those hot runs a low-seeded team occasionally experiences. First they shocked the Lakers—who had finished 14 games ahead of them in the standings—in the three-game miniseries, winning game three in Los Angeles. At the same time, the Kansas City Kings, who had also finished 40–42, upset Portland in their miniseries. Then, the two sub-.500 teams each pulled an even more shocking upset in the conference semis: the Rockets beat Midwest Division champion San Antonio in seven games, while the Kings stunned Phoenix, the top seed in the West after a 57-victory
regular season, also in seven games.

  That set up the all-sub-.500 conference final. The Rockets, full of confidence by now, won the series in five games. Remarkably, they were in the NBA finals, facing the Celtics, who had been rejuvenated a year earlier by the arrival of Larry Bird.

  Tomjanovich and Murphy didn’t quite know what to think. Each had dreamed about playing in the finals and at last they had arrived. “I loved being part of the finals,” Tomjanovich said. “But I didn’t really feel as if I was a part of them. I felt as if I had a very good seat.”

  With Malone playing wonderfully, the Rockets made the series a difficult one for the Celtics. They split the first four games before Bird took over in a dominating game five win and then made all the big shots down the stretch in game six at the Summit to wrap up the Celtics’ fourteenth NBA title. Auerbach’s gamble in the spring of 1978—drafting Bird in the first round even though he was planning to play in college for another year—had paid off in spades. And in a banner.

  Even in defeat Houston was euphoric. All the home playoff games in the last two rounds were sellouts. Scalpers were even seen outside the Summit, which had to be a first. When it was over, Tomjanovich wondered what his future with the Rockets was going to be.

  He only knew one thing for certain: it was time to prove himself all over again.

  What he needed to do, Tomjanovich was convinced, was get himself into the best shape of his life. The nagging injuries of the past two seasons had slowed him. He hadn’t played any summer ball since the comeback summer of 1978, and he knew he needed to do that to get himself into game shape coming into training camp. He was still young enough to have plenty of good basketball left in him.

  “I was going to show them,” he said. “Just like I had always done.”