The new coach was Don Chaney, the same Don Chaney who had been Kermit Washington’s teammate and close friend in Los Angeles and Boston, the same Don Chaney whose wife, Jackie, had placed the emergency phone call to Pat Washington on the night of the punch to warn her about what had happened. Chaney brought in John Killilea as a third assistant and scout, but kept Carroll Dawson and Tomjanovich with him as assistants. The new staff meshed quickly.
“You will never meet a better person to work with than Rudy,” Chaney said. “We hit it off right from the start. Our daughters were close in age, our wives liked each other, and we had similar backgrounds. It was as if we’d grown up together almost. Rudy really enjoyed being an assistant coach. I think he would have been perfectly happy to just keep being an assistant. I never had the sense that the thought of being the head coach ever crossed his mind.”
Chaney’s sense was correct. Tomjanovich was extremely happy working with Chaney and Dawson. As a second assistant, he was rarely in the public eye. Almost never did he have to deal with the media. He just coached. There were still those moments in airports when that flicker of recognition would cross someone’s face and he would hear, “You’re the guy who got nailed.” But that happened less often, especially since NBA teams were beginning to travel on charters at least some of the time by then.
In 1990–91, Chaney’s third season, the Rockets were 52–30 and he was named NBA coach of the year. Even with that record, the team was only the sixth seed in the Western Conference and drew the Lakers in the first round of the playoffs. The Lakers won in a 3–0 sweep, but there certainly seemed to be plenty of hope for the future again in Houston. As it turned out, this was Magic Johnson’s last season prior to his HIV-positive announcement, and the third-seeded Lakers ended up in the finals against Jordan’s Bulls, who won the first of their six titles in the Jordan era.
Fifty-two games into the following season, Houston’s hopes had soured. The Rockets hadn’t played poorly, but they hadn’t played as well as had been expected. At 25–20, they hit a skid, losing five of six. On February 18, they had a huge lead at home against the Minnesota Timberwolves and ended up blowing the lead and the game, losing 124–122 in overtime. It was one of those losses that keeps coaches up at night.
This was one of those nights. As he describes it in the opening chapter of his autobiography, he got a call at 3:00 A.M. from Robert Barr, the team’s strength coach, who told him he had an eerie feeling that something was about to happen. Tomjanovich didn’t want to hear it. He hung up and tried again to sleep, without success. He had never been a good sleeper since the punch, but this was a night when he didn’t sleep at all.
The team had an 11:00 A.M. practice the next day. When it was over the coaches talked briefly about getting together later to discuss game planning for their next game, two days later against the 76ers. Chaney went upstairs to his office, while Tomjanovich and Dawson went to put together some tapes on the Sixers. Shortly after that, they received a phone call: Steve Patterson wanted to see the two of them in his office. Steve Patterson had succeeded his father as the team’s general manager in 1989. Dawson and Tomjanovich looked at each other. Why would Patterson want to see the two of them and not Chaney?
The answer was obvious. “We need to go in there and fight for Don,” Tomjanovich remembers telling Dawson. “This isn’t right.”
As it turned out, there was nothing to fight for. The decision had been made. Chaney had been told. He had gone from coach of the year to unemployed coach in a little more than half a season. The assistant coaches protested briefly, but Patterson held up a hand. “Guys,” he said. “I know how loyal you are to Don. But it’s over.”
Patterson had tried to talk team owner Charlie Thomas out of the move already that morning. “I wanted to at least wait until the end of the season, see if Don could get things straightened out,” he said. “But Charlie had made up his mind. If I hadn’t made the move, he would have had someone else make the move.”
Patterson and Tomjanovich were friends. Steve had worked for the team since 1984, but he had hung around the team since college, when his father first became general manager. Often he and Tomjanovich went to blues bars together. But this was business.
Patterson turned to the future. The logical move, in-season, was to hand the team over to Dawson, the number one assistant. But Dawson had serious blood pressure problems and had lost sight in one eye. Patterson was concerned that elevating him might escalate his health problems. “Which means,” Patterson said, “that you’re the guy, Rudy.”
Tomjanovich was stunned. It had occurred to him that Chaney might be fired. It had not occurred to him that he would be sitting in a room being told he was the choice to run the team. In his book Tomjanovich wrote that Patterson said, “I’ll give you guys a few minutes alone to talk it over.” What he did not write was the last thing Patterson said before leaving. “Rudy, if you say no, my next call is going to be to Tom Nissalke.”
Nissalke was out of coaching at the time, living in Houston and doing some of the Rockets’ games on TV. The implication was clear: if Patterson called Nissalke, there was no guarantee that he wouldn’t insist on bringing in an entirely new staff.
Patterson wasn’t bluffing. He had already called Nissalke and told him he intended to offer the job to Tomjanovich but wasn’t sure he would be willing to take it, knowing how loyal he was to Chaney. He wanted Nissalke ready in case Tomjanovich said no, because he had to name a coach that day.
Tomjanovich had very serious doubts about being the head coach. Part of it was feeling bad for Chaney; part of it was jumping from number two assistant to head coach. But the overriding reason was not wanting to become a truly public figure again. He had enjoyed life in the shadows as an assistant. He still remembered how tough the 14–68 season nine years earlier had been on Del Harris and on Harris’s family. He was a popular, well-known figure in Houston, and moving up to being head coach would put him squarely in the spotlight again. Losing would not be easy if the team didn’t do well, and he knew, just knew, that every single story written about his elevation would include the inevitable paragraphs about the punch.
In the end, though, there was really no choice. Nissalke might keep both him and Dawson on or he might not. He might want to keep Tomjanovich since he had twenty-two years with the organization and not keep Dawson. He couldn’t risk that. When Patterson returned he reluctantly told him he would take the job.
“Good,” Patterson said. “Take thirty minutes, clean yourself up. You look tired. Then we’ll introduce you to the media.”
Those may have been the words Tomjanovich was dreading most: introduce you to the media. He had lived very happily away from notebooks, microphones, and cameras for more than ten years. Now he was back squarely in front of them.
20
Finding a Niche
While Rudy Tomjanovich felt comfortable as an assistant coach from day one, Kermit Washington never felt that way. Whether it was having to be a recruiter, the politics of Stanford, or the sense that he cared more than a lot of the athletes did, it was never the right fit for him.
Which was why, after his third year at Stanford, he thanked athletic director Andy Geiger for keeping him around after Tom Davis’s departure and resigned. He felt as if he had a few months to find a job because he would be spending the summer running Pete Newell’s Big Man’s Camp.
That was what it had evolved to by 1987—capital letters and all. Each summer, dating back to those torturous days in 1976, there had been more and more players showing up to work with Newell. Kiki Vandeweghe, while he was still in college, had been an early recruit. Then players like Jerome Whitehead and Kenny Carr had also joined in. Soon NBA teams, seeing the improvement in the players who were working with Newell, began encouraging their players to seek Newell out and ask him to spend some time with them.
By the time Washington retired as an active player, the camp had become a business. Newell had no interest in running a business,
so he turned the organization of the camp over to Washington, telling him if there were any profits, he was welcome to them. Washington then brought his friend Stu Lantz in to help him put the camp together.
When Washington went to work at Stanford, the camp moved to Palo Alto. By now more than fifty players were showing up each year. Later, as the camp continued to grow, a college division would be added. Washington made arrangements for court rentals and made deals with local hotels to put up the players during the two weeks that the camp was run. Teams now had to pay to send players to the camp: $2,000 per week. Once expenses were taken care of, Washington and Lantz divided the money, since Newell did not want to be paid. Even so, neither man was getting rich.
“We probably made about fifteen thousand dollars apiece when all was said and done,” Washington said. “That wasn’t really why we did it, though. We did it because of Pete. I always felt as if I owed him because of what he’d done for me, not only all the work he had done on my game, but because of the way he stood by me after the Rudy thing happened. I’m not sure I would have gotten through it all if not for him and Red and Pat. They were my salvation when things were at their worst.”
During the summer of 1987, Washington played a lot of pickup ball at the camp. He had never completely stopped playing basketball. During his years at Stanford he had actually played some rec league ball. He still enjoyed the feeling of being on the court and competing. Since he never played more than a night or two a week and never practiced, the pain in his knees and his back was almost completely gone. Then, in the summertime, when he played against good players in the camp, he found that he was still able to hold his own against NBA-caliber competition.
That’s where the idea of making a comeback came from. The more he played that summer, the more certain he was that he could play in the NBA again. He felt healthy. He believed he was stronger than he had ever been, because he had spent so much time building his body up in the weight room. He was thirty-six, certainly not young, but there were players in the league older than that. What’s more, when the summer ended, he didn’t have a job to go back to or any specific prospect of a job.
He called the Trail Blazers and told them he would like to come to training camp and see if he could make the team. Ramsay had retired the previous season and been replaced as coach by Mike Shuler. Shuler told Washington he was welcome to come to camp as a free agent.
The experiment didn’t last long—in Portland. As soon as Washington began dealing with the daily pounding of preseason practices he could feel his body starting to break down again. He was still convinced he could play, because when he did make it to the floor, he would play well. The problem was, he couldn’t maintain it for any long period of time. He wanted to be part of the team as a 10–15-minute-a-night, off-the-bench role player. Shuler didn’t necessarily have a problem with that, but he did have a problem with any player, especially one whose game minutes were going to be limited, who couldn’t practice. It came down, finally, to that: Shuler told Washington if he couldn’t practice on a regular basis, he couldn’t make the team. Washington knew there was no way he could do that, especially over the course of an entire season.
Shuler and Washington agreed to disagree and Washington left camp. Before he even had a chance to think about what to do next, Washington got a call from Don Nelson, who was then the general manager of the Golden State Warriors. The Warriors were looking for experienced backup help in the frontcourt, a mature player to provide some leadership on a young team. Larry Smith was injured and Chris Washburn, who had been the team’s number one pick in the 1986 draft, was headed for drug rehab. Nelson thought Washington could provide depth inside.
Washington jumped at the chance. He reported to the Warriors’ camp and played well in several exhibition games, well enough for coach George Karl to tell him he would be in the rotation when the season began in Sacramento. Washington’s knees still ached, but Karl was more flexible about his practice time than Shuler had been, and he still thought he had some good basketball left in him.
That feeling didn’t last long. Washington played well on opening night, a blowout loss to the Sacramento Kings, but with each passing game, his playing time dwindled. It was apparent early that it was going to be a long season for the Warriors, and Karl didn’t see any purpose in giving a lot of minutes to a player who clearly wasn’t going to be around when the team became competitive again. Nelson was in the process of trying to shake up the team, a shakeup that would eventually lead to the trade with the Rockets that would bring Ralph Sampson to Golden State. Washington had played 30 minutes on opening night. It was less and less after that. And then, after six games, it dwindled to nothing.
“I could see what was happening,” Washington said. “George was a good guy, I liked him, but I think it was Don who wanted me on the team, not George. When the team started badly, it wasn’t as if keeping an old guy around made sense. It wasn’t as if they were going to be fighting for a playoff spot.”
Even if he understood it intellectually, Washington was still hurt when the end came in Atlanta. Karl called him in and told him they had made a decision to cut him. Nothing personal, but it was clear that the team needed to focus on younger players. Washington said he understood—which he did—but he was still unhappy.
“I think it came down to George not wanting Don to tell him who should be on the team,” he said. “I mean, when I got to play, I played well. I could have helped teach their young big men along the way. But it didn’t happen that way.”
There was one sidelight to his brief time with the Warriors. Just prior to the start of the regular season, the team played an exhibition game in Sacramento. Tomjanovich was there doing some preseason scouting for the Rockets. Prior to the game, for the first time in the ten years since that fateful night in Los Angeles, Washington and Tomjanovich spoke.
The conversation was brief. Washington told Tomjanovich that he hoped he understood that he had never meant to hurt him the way he had, that the punch had been an instinctive reaction, nothing more. “Rudy, I didn’t even know it was you,” Washington said.
Tomjanovich believed him. He told him he had forgiven him long ago and that they both needed to just move on with their lives. It was in the past.
“But it’s not in the past for me,” Washington said. “People bring it up to me all the time. Even now, in this comeback, every story written about me doesn’t talk about the good things I’ve done in my life, it talks about the punch. It still haunts me.”
Tomjanovich didn’t really know what to say. He didn’t doubt anything Washington was saying, but he had to live with the looks and the comments too. And he had endured unbelievable physical pain. It was difficult, try though he might, to work up a lot of sympathy for Washington.
“I wanted to feel sympathetic,” he said years later. “I understood what he was saying to me. I had always tried to follow Dr. Toffel’s advice and not resent Kermit or feel animosity toward him for what he had done. I felt like I had done a pretty good job, mostly by just not thinking about him. But if I tried to feel sympathy, to really feel badly for him… back then, that was tough.”
The two men shook hands that night. Tomjanovich told him there were no hard feelings. Washington wanted to believe that. So did Tomjanovich.
It wasn’t easy for either one of them.
Like it or not, Kermit Washington knew the day he was cut from the Warriors that once and for all he had to stop thinking of himself as a basketball player and start thinking of himself as an ex–basketball player.
An ex–basketball player who needed a job.
He was in pretty good shape financially. He had finally sold his homes in California, and between the camp and Stanford, he had made pretty good money since retiring. He had invested his NBA money well, so he was comfortable living in Lake Oswego, a suburb of Portland, with Pat and the two children.
But he wasn’t the kind of person who could sit around and hope his investments did well. He
would continue to work the camp in the summer, but he needed more. He went back to the abandoned weight vest idea, trying to market it enough to make it profitable. “I ended up losing a bundle on it,” he said. He also began contacting NBA teams about a job, to no avail.
In the process of trying to market the weight vest, he went on a local radio show in Portland. They wanted him to talk about his comeback, his years in Portland, basketball in general. He was still a very popular figure in the Portland area. Washington agreed to go on because he knew at some point the host would ask him what he was doing and he would get to talk about the vest.
The appearance went well, so well in fact that the radio station asked him if he wanted to do some part-time work cohosting a sports talk show. This was before stations all around the country were switching over to an all-sports format, so there weren’t that many hours a week available. And the pay was a joke: $20 an hour. Washington accepted.
“I figured it was a chance to go on and promote the vest on a regular basis,” he said.
The vest wasn’t going to make money if he was given a twenty-four-hour-a-day infomercial on the station. Most people who work out don’t want to run themselves into the ground doing it. The vest might help get an athlete with Washington’s drive into better shape, but the average recreational workout athlete wanted nothing to do with it.
But while the vest wasn’t selling, Washington was building an audience. He had the built-in advantage of being an ex-Blazer, someone most sports fans in Portland had fond memories of. Beyond that, he was good on the radio. He was articulate and quick, knew a lot about sports, and had plenty of opinions on anything and everything.
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