Feinstein delivers | The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever

" The Punch" | The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever | John Feinstein

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	• The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever John Feinstein Back Bay Books, 2003 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 51 reviews view larger image
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Two victims: one sympathetic

Everyone has a moment in their live's that has significant consequences. A time where everything changes, often as the result of a split-second or rash action. Kermit Washington, then of the Los Angeles Lakers, and Rudy Tomjanovich, of the Houston Rockets, on one night in 1977 in the midst of an NBA Game had such a moment. In an instant, Tomjanovich was almost killed by a punch which had connected with extreme force and velocity, and Kermit Washington was foreever defined by that aberrant act of violence.

Feinstein writes well and describes a fascinating world of professional athletics in the 1970's. He describes each of the protagonists' lives and the perspectives and effects of the incident to all whom it affected. Some great characters of sport past are here: Pete Newell, Red Auerbach, Bill Walton, Rick Barry, Chick Hearn, Larry O'Brien, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, etc. The writing is smooth and entertaining and keeps you from turning away.

There are some problems with the book, however. Editing is poor. Episodes recounted in one chapter are repeated in another. More importantly, Feinstein tries so hard to be objective that he distances himself from the reader. One cannot read this book and not come to the unmistakably conclusion that the reason why the event still affects Kermit Washington is because Washington has never come to grips with his own conduct.

The book relates how never really apologized or took accountability and that his failure to do so, when contrasted with Tomjanovich's ability to overcome in life and basketball, turns him into a self-inflicted victim. Now, Feinstein implies such and uses the words of others to reach this conclusion, but it would've been nice if he would break free from the sympathetic shoulder and challenge some of Washington's self-serving statements. This lack of journalistic integrity is particularly distressing in light of the clear implication that Washington, in an attempt to avoid personal responsibility, has dragged the reputation of another player and his family (Kevin Kunnert) through the mud. Inasmuch as Feinstein wants you to feel for Washington, this book fails to conform to the facts.

Still, an entertaining read and a fascinating look at sport in a different time and different place.

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Feinstein delivers

The punch. This was a horrible sports moment which affected so many lives. I still get shivers when I think of that event. As a teenager, it changed some of my views on sports, life and the two individuals involved. Feinstein had the incredible challenge of revisiting this event with the Rudy and Kermit and with the reader.
Feinstein delicately, but straightforwardly, tackles this subject, bringing out a wide range of emotions from himself, the particpants, the onlookers and the reader. He succeeds in showing that both men are truly victims of this unfortunate event. Rudy T is not the hero, nor Kermit the villian, although each will begrudgingly play that role on and off for years.
For the first time ever, the incident is studied in painstaking detail. It is poked and probed from many angles. For the first time ever, Kermit and Rudy both have a say about the event. Hopefully, this experience will help both men help. I know this book certainly opened my eyes to the men and the challenges both faced in the aftermath.

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" The Punch"

"The Punch" was an important event in the history of basketball. The author, John Feinstein did an okay job writing this book, but he kind of lost my interest after he started to repeat statements. "The Punch" is worth reading, because it told the event that changed the sport forever. If you are interested in basketball I recommend reading this book.

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"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..."

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With his unerring insight into the deeper truths of professional sports, John Feinstein explores in riveting detail what happened that fateful night in 1977 when, as a fistfight broke out on the court between the Houston Rockets and the Los Angeles Lakers, Kermit Washington delivered the now legendary punch that nearly killed All-Star Rudy Tomjanovich, radically changing the trajectory of both men's lives and reverberating throughout the National Basketball Association to this day. Through this one cataclysmic event Feinstein casts a light on the NBA's darkest secrets, revealing the true price men pay when they choose a career in sports.

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