The Punch

by John Feinstein

  “For example, if something had caused him to become sick in flight,” Toffel said. “With his mouth wired shut, he could suffocate in a situation like that.”

  Toffel had only known Tomjanovich for fifteen days as they flew east, but he felt close to him, having watched him deal with what had happened. He knew that what was to come wasn’t going to be easy either. Rudy would need at least one more round of surgery— to fix a blocked tear duct—and there would be a lot of pain ahead. Then would come rehab, because Tomjanovich had made it clear that he fully intended to play basketball again.

  “Rudy, I honestly believe that something good is going to come out of this chapter in your life,” Toffel said on the plane. “I know that may be tough to believe right now, but I really think it’s true. You’re going to be a different person because of this—you have to be. And I think you’re the kind of person who can take adversity and use it to make you stronger.”

  Tomjanovich appreciated what Toffel was saying, and he understood the message in his words. He had made a point of not thinking about Kermit Washington since the moment when Toffel had told him that negative energy of any kind was wasted energy and he was going to need every last bit of energy he had in order to recover. He had read of Washington’s suspension in the papers and moved on from there.

  “The anger had really gone out of me after that first night,” he said. “For one thing, I was too terrified to feel angry at anyone for the first couple of days. Then, when I started to feel a little better, there were so many other things to think about and so many things I had to do that there wasn’t time to think about Kermit or even to think about how I felt about Kermit.

  “He just wasn’t important to me. What was important to me was getting home to see my girls, being with Sophie, and getting better. I just wanted to get better.”

  He knew the process would be slow, because Toffel had explained that to him. He knew his return home would be joyful, but not easy for his family. He wondered how Nichole and Melissa would feel about the way their dad looked. Sophie was going to have to learn how to work the wire cutters so she could cut the wires open if something went wrong.

  But at least he was home. Jim Foley, the Rockets’ public relations director, met them at the plane with a sheepish look on his face. Tomjanovich’s return was supposed to be a secret, but somehow a local TV station had gotten word and sent a crew. Foley apologized. Tomjanovich really didn’t care. It was Christmas Eve and he was home. A TV crew filming his arrival wasn’t about to ruin that.

  When he walked through the door and hugged his daughters, they both looked at him wide-eyed. Nichole, who was four, kept asking, “Daddy, why did the man do that to your face?”

  “I didn’t have an answer for that one,” he said.

  Trey Washington was born in Los Angeles on January 26, 1978. He was named for a former football player whom Kermit had become friends with while working out in the weight room at American. By then there were a little more than two weeks left before Kermit would be eligible to come off the suspended list. The league had called to say that Commissioner O’Brien wanted to hold a hearing in his office on January 30 before deciding whether to lift the suspension.

  “Tell them I’m not coming,” Washington told Donald Dell on the phone. “They’ve already taken all this money from me, why should I pay to fly cross-country when they’ve already made up their minds about me?”

  Dell didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He had been back and forth with O’Brien and with David Stern, the league’s outside legal counsel, ever since the suspension. He knew nothing was cast in stone, but he was convinced that the hearing was nothing more than a formality so that O’Brien could look Washington in the eye, make it clear that he better not ever be involved in anything resembling this again, and then reinstate him.

  “Kermit, if you want to play again, you have to come to New York,” Dell said. “It’s as simple as that.”

  “Fine,” Washington said. “I won’t play. I can get a teaching job.”

  He was only half-kidding. He had already looked into the possibility of getting work as a teacher if he wasn’t reinstated. Money was starting to run short. He had paid the league $10,000 and he hadn’t been paid since mid-December. By the time the two months was up, he would have lost more than $53,000 in salary in addition to paying the fine.

  “Kermit, you love to play,” Dell said. “I know it, you know it. Come to New York and you’ll play again. I’m almost certain of it.”

  Washington didn’t like the “almost” part. He wanted a guarantee, but he knew Dell couldn’t give him one. He also knew that no teaching job was going to pay him anything close to what basketball paid. He would be a free agent at the end of the season. He needed to show teams he could still play in the wake of the incident so someone would sign him. Finally, Dell was right. He did love to play. He loved preparing to play. For the first time since college, he had gotten out of his workout regimen. He wanted to have games to prepare for again. He agreed—at last—to fly to New York.

  He was still grumbling about the $500 he had paid in airfare when Dell met him at his hotel for breakfast on the morning of the hearing. Dell had spoken with O’Brien once more in the interim, and O’Brien’s parting words to him were, he thought, important: “Donald,” he had said, “you know I’ll be fair.”

  “I thought that was a tipoff,” Dell said. “Larry O’Brien was a fair guy, and I was convinced he had done his homework and knew Kermit wasn’t a bad guy. My sense was that unless Kermit came in and really acted like a jerk, he was going to reinstate him.”

  O’Brien had done his homework. In addition to the referees’ reports and the report he had received from security chief Jack Joyce, he had checked on Washington’s reputation around the league. He had also received a number of letters and phone calls from people telling him that this was a good guy. Auerbach had called him; Pete Newell had written to him. Josh Rosenfeld, Washington’s college friend, had also written to him.

  “After the suspension happened, I was so upset, I thought I should write O’Brien a note just so he could know some things about Kermit that he probably didn’t know,” Rosenfeld said. “I was in the city, so I decided to go by the NBA offices and deliver the letter personally so it would get to him that much faster. As I was about to get off the elevator, who is getting on? Larry O’Brien.

  “So I rode down with him, introduced myself, and handed him the letter. He must have stood and talked to me in the lobby for twenty minutes. I remember him saying to me, ‘You aren’t the first person to come forward on Kermit’s behalf. I have the sense that he’s a pretty special guy.’ That made me feel much better about the whole thing.”

  David Stern remembers being fairly sure that O’Brien intended to reinstate Washington. “There had been a lot of communication with Donald,” he said. “I always respected Donald. He was a very aggressive advocate for his clients at all times, and he would play every angle he could play. But he was smart enough to understand that in a different circumstance, he might be arguing the other side with just as much passion. To me, that always made him a worthy adversary.”

  On the morning of the hearing, Dell’s most dangerous adversary appeared to be his client. Washington walked into breakfast wearing one of those western string ties and a large frown.

  “Kermit, what’s with the tie?” Dell said. “We’re trying to make a good impression here. We want O’Brien to understand that you’re one of the good guys in the sport, not one of the bad guys.”

  “And he’ll think I’m one of the bad guys because of this tie?” Washington asked.

  “No, no,” Dell answered. “But it’s part of the whole package.”

  “Okay, Donald, what do you want me to do when we get in there?” Washington said.

  “I want you not to say anything until I ask you a question or O’Brien asks you a question,” Dell said. “Answer every question honestly and look him right in the eye when you’re talking to him.”r />
  Washington nodded. “Would you also like me to order up some fried chicken and watermelon and then maybe jump on his desk and do a tap dance? Maybe that would make all of you happy.”

  Dell sighed. It was going to be a long day.

  When they reached 645 Fifth Avenue, they took the elevator up to the NBA offices. Walking in, Dell tried to remind Washington one more time to stay calm regardless of what was said or what he was asked. “Got you, Donald,” Washington answered. “Fried chicken and watermelon. Keep everybody happy. I should smile a lot too, right?”

  Dell rolled his eyes.

  “I was hostile, you bet I was,” Washington later said. “I didn’t see why I had to fly all the way across the country so Larry O’Brien could tell me what a bad guy I was. I already knew how he felt. The suspension was proof of that.”

  Washington and Dell were ushered into O’Brien’s office, where O’Brien and Stern were waiting. There was no stenographer and no one took any formal notes.

  “I think that was due in part to Larry’s legal training,” said Stern. “I’m the same way. I’ve never kept a diary or a journal, and I don’t think Larry ever did either. Plus, he was an informal guy to begin with. What took place was a hearing, but not in the sense that you would normally envision a hearing.”

  Washington says now that O’Brien lectured him that day. “He said to me, ‘We don’t need your kind in our league,’” he said. “I told him, ‘Oh really? You don’t know me at all. You don’t know who I am. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t do drugs, I work in my community. Is that the kind of person you don’t need in the league?’”

  Dell confirms that there was an angry exchange between O’Brien and Washington, but has no memory of O’Brien saying what Washington vividly remembers. “He may very well have said, ‘We don’t need incidents like this in our league,’ or, ‘We can’t have incidents like this,’ but I don’t remember him saying anything like that to Kermit. I think if he had, I would remember it, because it would be so unlike Larry. And I think, I would certainly hope, if he said something like that, I would have jumped in.”

  Stern is more adamant. “I don’t remember that meeting very well,” he said. “But Larry O’Brien just wouldn’t talk like that. Was he concerned about the incident and the fighting in the league and our image? Absolutely. But a comment like that just wasn’t Larry O’Brien.”

  O’Brien died in 1990, and the NBA has no written record of what was said in the hearing.

  Washington remains bitter about what he believes was said. Even so, he did do what Dell had counseled him to do. He told O’Brien he had made a mistake and he was sorry about what had happened to Tomjanovich. He also told O’Brien that he wanted to play basketball again but if he couldn’t, he’d be just fine. He had his college degree. He would go teach someplace. He didn’t talk about the scuffle with Kevin Kunnert, because he and Dell both knew O’Brien didn’t really care what had started the fight, he cared about how it had ended. When the hearing was over, O’Brien told Dell he would consult with Stern and be in touch with him as soon as he reached a decision.

  The four men shook hands. Washington and Dell left, Washington still smoldering. “He’s not going to lift the suspension,” Washington said. “I flew all this way for nothing. He has already made up his mind.”

  Dell, who was just glad to be out of there without any references to fried chicken or watermelon, was too tired to argue further. “I think you’re wrong about Larry, Kermit. I’ve known him a long time,” he said. “But we’ll see.”

  O’Brien called Dell the next morning. “I’m reinstating Kermit Washington as of February twelfth,” he said. “But you better warn him. His next fight in the NBA will be his last.”

  Dell breathed a huge sigh of relief and called Washington. “Start getting back in shape,” he said. “You’re back in the NBA.”

  A Celtics uniform would be waiting for him in San Francisco. So would the rest of his life.

  8

  Too Soon to Dream

  Kermit Alan Washington was born September 17, 1951, in Washington, D.C., the second son of Alexander and Barbara Washington. His brother, Eric Christopher—always called Chris—was eighteen months older than he was.

  Very few of Kermit’s early memories are happy ones. His mother had been a brilliant student in college, getting one B in four years at Miner’s Teachers College in Washington, D.C. (which later became part of Howard University). His father had also grown up in Washington, and spent much of his adult life working at D.C. General Hospital as an X-ray technician.

  Barbara Washington was a manic-depressive. She was treated often at St. Elizabeth’s, the D.C. hospital for the mentally disturbed. Kermit lived with his parents until he was four years old. Then one night there was a fight involving his mother and father and his mother’s brother. Kermit remembers screaming and yelling and blood. No one died, but soon after, Chris and Kermit were sent to live with their paternal great-grandmother.

  This was not exactly an ideal living situation for two little boys. They wondered where their mother had gone and why they only saw their father on occasion. Their great-grandmother was extremely strict. The boys were kept on a very short leash all the time. “It was,” Kermit remembered, “a miserable existence. Our great-grandmother loved us, but she had no idea how to deal with two little boys. We thought she was very mean.”

  One day when Chris and Kermit were playing outside, their mother came to see them. They were thrilled. She told them they were going on a trip together. The next thing the boys knew, they were on a bus leaving Washington with her. Kermit doesn’t remember exactly how long they traveled—he estimates it was about two weeks—but he remembers being hungry all the time. “Sometimes my mother would get a job for a day or two and then we’d be able to eat,” he said. “Other times we would try to get food at the Salvation Army or anyplace we could. We loved being back with our mother, but we were confused and scared and hungry.”

  Eventually, Alexander Washington figured out where his wife and sons were and brought the boys back to D.C. and their great grandmother’s house. Barbara Washington ended up back at St. Elizabeth’s. Four years later Alexander came to the house one day with an announcement: he was remarrying and the boys would be moving back in with him and his new wife, who was also named Barbara. Hallelujah, thought the boys, free at last, free at last.

  “It was the happiest day of our lives,” Kermit said years later. “We thought our great-grandmother was the devil. She would hit us whenever we misbehaved at all. Most of the time she was mean to us. About the only time she wasn’t mean was when she watched television. I remember she loved Perry Mason and wrestling.

  “When dad said he was marrying Barbara and we were going to move in with them, Chris and I thought it was our dream come true. All our lives we had seen nice families on TV. Real ones. Now we were going to be a real family. That was the first time in my life I learned the hard lesson: be careful what you wish for.”

  The newly minted family moved into 237 Farragut Street N.W., in an area of Washington that, back then, was gang-ridden. Two gangs dominated the area, the Riggs Park gang and the Decatur Street gang. Kermit recalled, “If one gang didn’t come up and take your lunch money, the other one did. Sometimes, if one gang took your money and then the other gang came after you, they’d beat you up for not having any money. Every day of your life, you would leave your house scared because you knew someone was going to come after you. It was an awful way to live.”

  According to Kermit, his stepmother wasn’t at all pleased to find that her new marriage included two lively boys. By then Chris had established himself as a gifted student. Every time the boys took a standardized test of any kind, Chris was off the charts. Kermit was the slogger. He did okay in school, never got in serious trouble, but barely kept his head above water academically.

  One thing their great-grandmother had given both boys was manners. She had insisted they respect their elders, call them sir
and ma’am, and always be polite. It was a lesson that Kermit never forgot.

  Life with their father and stepmother was no happier for Chris and Kermit than life had been with their great-grandmother. Worse, in fact. “At least our great-grandmother loved us,” Kermit said. “Barbara couldn’t stand us.”

  There were constant fights. Kermit remembers a time he and Chris were shoveling snow off their walk. Neither had a pair of gloves. When Chris wanted to go inside to warm his hands up, Barbara wouldn’t let him in. “She said we couldn’t come in until we finished the job,” Kermit said. “I was too timid to say anything, but Chris wasn’t. They fought all the time.”

  Throughout their boyhood, Chris was Kermit’s protector. Chris was bigger, stronger, smarter, tougher—at least as far as his little brother was concerned. Chris was the one who stood up to Barbara, the one who made good grades in school whenever he wanted to. “Sometimes I’d have a homework assignment I had no chance to get done,” Kermit said. “He’d say, ‘What will you give me to do that for you?’ I couldn’t offer him money because we never had any. So I’d tell him I would clean up after all the animals at our grandmother’s house, because he hated doing that. He’d take the paper and do it in about two minutes. It was so easy for him, I told him he should feel guilty about taking anything from me for doing it.”

  But even though he didn’t really understand it then, Kermit could see that his older brother was troubled. He had a bed-wetting problem that lasted until he was in the ninth grade. “Barbara always told him she was going to hang his sheets out the window so people could see them,” Kermit said. “That was about the only time I remember seeing Chris scared.”

  Chris stopped working in school, although he was still in programs for the gifted. He was accepted at McKinley Tech High School based on his standardized testing. Kermit wasn’t in Chris’s league when it came to testing. He was scheduled to go to Roosevelt High School. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was go to Roosevelt. “It was smack in the middle of the two gangs,” he said. “No matter what route you took to get to school or get home, you had to go through the gangs. I was tired of getting beat up and tired of never having my lunch money. So I lied about where I lived when I filled out the forms to be assigned a high school. I wanted to go to Coolidge, because it was safe at Coolidge. No gangs. No one checked on my address. I got sent to Coolidge.”