One Punch

For decades, the late Rodney Dangerfield used a one-liner about hockey. “The other night, I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out.” That same joke has never been made about basketball, but, there was a time when fights in basketball were just about as frequent as in hockey. And, if you don’t remember that, you aren’t alone, because that time was before December, 9, 1977.

How pervasive was fighting in professional basketball before that date? Sports Illustrated ran a cover story on “enforcers” in the NBA. John Brisker was known as “the heavyweight champion of the ABA”. And, the most-famous moment of the 1976 NBA Finals was a near brawl between the man on the cover of that issue of Sports Illustrated, Darryl Dawkins of the Philadelphia 76ers, and Maurice Lucas of the Portland Trail Blazers.

Fighting on the court, though, wasn’t something that developed in the 70s, when Dawkins, Brisker, and Lucas played. It had been around as long as the NBA. From the very beginning of the league until that date in December, 1977, lots of guys fought. But, nobody fought with Wilt Chamberlain. Ever. Because, Wilt was, by far, the strongest man in the league and might well have been the strongest man on the planet. And everyone knew it. He once broke up a fight between two guards by grabbing one in each hand, lifting them both off the floor and saying, “Nobody wants to see you two fight, so just stop.” They stopped. As did anyone else when Wilt took a couple of steps in their direction. But, nobody else was Wilt. Everybody else was fair game. And, you never knew what might start a fight, or how one might end.

Again, fighting was pervasive, and that’s why many teams had “enforcers”. Among the three most feared was Lucas, the greatest basketball player ever to come out of Pittsburgh. He led Schenley High School to the PIAA basketball championship in 1971, took Marquette to the National Championship Game in 1974, and won the NBA title with the Portland Trail Blazers in 1976. Sonny Vaccaro called Lucas the strongest man he ever met. He was 6’8”, 240 and it was all muscle, muscle he was about to unleash on Dawkins late in game two of those 1976 NBA Finals. The Blazers were being blown out and about to go down 2-0 in the series when, after a scuffle for a rebound, Dawkins threw a punch at a Trail Blazer and, pretty much, missed. Didn’t matter. Lucas went after him and, had the fight not been broken up, may well have committed homicide on national television. (Dawkins was a big man, but not in Lucas’ league when it came to fighting.) As it was, the incident fired up the Blazers, who proceeded to destroy the heavily-favored Sixers in the next four games to claim the series and the title 4-2.

The strongest man in the NBA after Wilt retired was Washington Bullets center Wes Unseld, the second of the most-feared enforcers. Unseld was 6’7”, a little short for the position. But, he made up for that with his power. Listed at 245 pounds, he played at closer to 260, and, was scary strong. Unseld could fight, but he usually acted as enforcer by stopping fights, simply by getting in between the two guys trying to fight. Because, you could not move Unseld if he did not want to be moved.

The third member of the “enforcers” triumvirate was, believe it or not, 5’10” guard Calvin Murphy. No. I am not making that up. Murphy was an incredible athlete. And, he had also been a Golden Gloves boxer. He was involved in many fights over his career and never lost one. The most famous came against 6’8” Sidney Wicks of the Celtics, a fight so popular with fans of the Houston Rockets that it was shown over and over again on the scoreboard. Murphy leaped into the air, grabbed Wicks by his hair, pulled him down to Murphy’s level, and landed seven lightning-fast punches before the fight could be broken up. As you can imagine, the Rockets got no end of response from fans by showing the fight any time the Celtics were in town. Until Celtics coach Tom Heinsohn, a hot-tempered, 6’5” former player himself, approached the Rockets coach before a game and uttered just one line. “The next time I see that fight on the scoreboard, the next fight is gonna be between you and ME.” Heinsohn walked off. And the fight never played on the scoreboard again when the Celtics were in town.

Now, think about that last paragraph. Can you imagine a fight being played over and over again on the scoreboard at a basketball game today? Unthinkable.But, again, not before December, 9. 1977. The thinking on fighting started to change after the near-brawl between Lucas and Dawkins, two huge, powerful men. It was plenty scary, and the league made some rules designed to punish that kind of thing more severely. But, they didn’t go far enough.

Fighting continued into the 1977-78 season. In fact, on opening night, with the Lakers playing the Bucks, Milwaukee center Kent Benson elbowed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the stomach. Kareem responded by punching Benson in the face, breaking the Milwaukee center’s jaw and Abdul-Jabbar’s own hand. A few games later, the Lakers Kermit Washington got into it with Buffalo Braves’ center John Shumate and was attacked from behind by a Buffalo player. The incident troubled Washington, who’d grown up in a tough area of Washington, DC, and knew that you never let anyone get you from behind, where they could pin your arms.

Then came December 9, 1977.The Lakers vs. the Houston Rockets. Early in the second half, Laker Norm Nixon missed a shot and Washington battled for the rebound with Rockets center Kevin Kunnert. Things got more physical than usual, and Abdul-Jabbar got involved, wrestling with Kunnert. Washington stayed in the back court to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. After Kunnert and Abdul-Jabbar broke apart, Washington grabbed Kunnert’s shorts to keep him from racing down court. Kunnert swung an elbow that hit Washington in the upper arm and the swing turned him to face the Laker power forward. Kunnert denies what happened next, but several Lakers and Rocket forward Robert Reid have confirmed it. Kunnert punched Washington. Abdul-Jabbar then grabbed Kunnert from behind, pinning his arms in an effort to pull him away from the fight. Washington was already swinging and landed a punch to the head that dropped Kunnert to his knees.

Enter Rudy Tomjanovich. The Rocket forward raced down court to enter the fray in an effort to break it up. Washington had no idea that was the case. He just saw someone coming at him from behind, just like in Buffalo. He flattened Tomjanovich with a roundhouse punch that fractured the Rocket forward’s face and left him unconscious in a pool of blood in the middle of the arena floor. The punch was so hard that reporters actually heard it in the second-floor press box. And the damage was incredible. Tomjanovich had a concussion, but things were much worse than that. The bone structure of his face had been detached from his skull and he was leaking blood and spinal fluid into his skull capsule. He could actually taste spinal fluid leaking into his mouth, and later said that, immediately after the incident, he thought the scoreboard had fallen on him. The doctor who worked on Tomjanovich later said that he’d seen people die from far less serious injuries than ones the Rocket forward suffered, injuries that mimicked something someone involved in an auto accident at 50 miles an hour might have suffered.

Tomjanovich, miraculously, made a full recovery, continued his career and later became an NBA head coach. He won two NBA Championships with the Rockets and coached the United States to an Olympic Gold medal.

Washington’s story was different. He was immediately cast as the villain, partly because of the injuries his punch caused, and partly because of the way it was portrayed. The only replay available showed just the punch and not the melee that preceded it, making the attack look unprovoked. Washington was suspended for 60 days, the longest suspension in the history of the league to that time, but many didn’t think that was enough. He got tons of hate mail, much of it racial in nature. The hatred for Washington became so pervasive that the police advised him not to order room service once he returned to the league, for fear that he might be poisoned. Washington’s wife’s obstetrician refused her service when he found out who her husband was.

Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke, an execrable human being, wanted Kermit Washington gone, and forced a trade over the objections of coach Jerry West. The forward was shipped to Boston. Celtics’ general manager Red Auerbach lived in the DC area and had long been a fan of Washington’s. And, amazingly, he became a fan favorite in Boston, thanks partly to a sympathetic piece written by newspaper columnist Bob Ryan. But, Washington’s time in Boston would be short-lived, as a series of crazy coincidences was about to begin that would, once again, prove just how random the Universe is.

First, Kunnert, despite his frosty relationship with Washington, signed with Boston, making them teammates. Then, things got weirder. Boston’s owner, Irv Levin, was a California guy and wanted to move closer to home and his business interests while still owning an NBA team. Knowing that any efforts to move the Celtics would result in his violent death, Levin agreed to exchange franchises with John Y. Brown, Jr., who owned the Buffalo Braves. Levin then moved the Braves to San Diego and renamed them the Clippers. As part of the deal, four Celtics players were traded to the Clippers. Two of them were Washington and Kunnert. Now, not only was Washington teammates with Kunnert, he was also teammates with Shumate, with whom he’d had the fight in Buffalo. But. Not for long.

After the 1978-79 season, Washington’s first in San Diego, Levin decided he wanted to acquire Bill Walton, who’d been the star of the Portland team that had won the 1976 NBA Championship, despite the fact that Walton had missed the entire 1978-79 season due to broken bones in his foot. The two teams couldn’t agree on compensation, so the league eventually intervened and sent Washington, Randy Smith, and, unbelievably, Kunnert, to Portland. (And, that wasn’t the only strange part of the trade. Before Walton had led Portland to the NBA Championship, he’d been at UCLA on the teams that compiled a record 88-game winning streak. That streak had been ended by Notre Dame. And, the center on that Notre Dame team was John Shumate, the man Walton would be replacing in the starting line up in San Diego.) Washington played for the Blazers for three years, earning an all-star berth, before retiring due to knee problems.

The real legacy of the punch, though, was the sea change in the league as a result. NBA officials immediately understood that an incident like what happened between Washington and Tomjanovich could never be allowed to happen again. This wasn’t baseball, with average-sized guys going after one another. It wasn’t football, where everyone was padded up. And, it wasn’t hockey, with average-sized guys, unable to plant their feet, throwing arm punches. These were huge, powerful men with no padding standing, not on ice, but on wood floors in shoes designed for traction. Former NBA Commissioner David Stern, then the league’s chief counsel, said, everyone realized that “you couldn’t allow men that big and strong to go around throwing punches at each other.” So, the league acted, adding a third official and enacting a series of strict rules designed to eliminate fighting. And, they’ve just about done so. With a few exceptions (and the infamous Pistons/Pacers brawl in 2004, remember, involved players fighting fans, not other players), fighting has ceased to exist in the NBA. And, something else has ceased to exist, too.

In the aftermath of the punch, Tomjanovich told reporters, “I still don’t think there’s any way he could convince me or anyone else could convince me that what he did is excusable.” In November, 1978, less than a year after the incident, Tomjanovich was back playing with the Rockets and Washington was with the Clippers. The two teams played in Houston and Clippers coach Gene Shue suggested to Rockets coach Tom Nissalke that the two players shake hands before tipoff. Tomjanovich refused. Understandably, Tomjanovich used some not-so-kind terms to refer to Washington in those days. Today, he uses a different term. “Brother”. “This is no big deal that I just forgave Kermit or anything,” Tomjanovich said in an interview several years ago. “That happened a long time ago.” Would that we were all the kind of person that Rudy Tomjanovich is.