The Book of Basketball (22 page)

Crisis no. 5: fighting.
Fighting had always been considered part of basketball, an inevitable outcome of a physical sport (much like hockey). Willis Reed put himself on the map by cleaning out the ’67 Lakers. Maurice Lucas made his reputation by dropping Gilmore. Dennis Awtrey lasted ten years because he was the Guy Who Once Decked Kareem. Ricky Sobers turned around the ’76 Warriors-Suns series by socking Barry. Calvin Murphy had the league’s most famous Napoleon complex, frequently beating up bigger guys and scoring a knockout over six-foot-nine Sidney Wicks. So when the Blazers and Sixers had their ugly brawl in Game 2 of the ’77 Finals, nobody was really
that
appalled. It started when Darryl Dawkins tried to sucker-punch Bobby Gross (hitting teammate Doug Collins instead), then backpedaled right into a flying elbow from
Lucas,
⁸⁰
followed by the two of them squaring off like 1920s bare-knuckle boxers before everyone jumped in. After getting ejected, Dawkins couldn’t calm down and ended up destroying a few toilets in the Philly locker room. Was anyone suspended? Of course not! Not to sound like Grumpy Old Editor, but that’s the way it worked in the seventies and we
loved it
! Portland swept the last four games and everyone agreed afterward that Lucas’ flying elbow was the turning point of the series. It was the perfect NBA fight for the times—no injuries, tremendous TV and a valuable lesson learned about sticking up for your teammates.
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Fast-forward to October:
Sports Illustrated
revolves its NBA preview issue around “the Enforcers,” sticking Lucas’ menacing mug on the cover and glorifying physical players in a pictorial ominously titled “Nobody, but Nobody, Is Gonna Hurt My Teammates.” In retrospect, it’s an incredible piece to read; the magazine took intimidating-looking pictures of each enforcer like they were WWF wrestlers, with Kermit Washington (gulp) posing shirtless like a boxer. Each picture was accompanied with text to make these bruisers sound like a combination of Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson. An example: “Kermit Washington, the 6’8”, 230-pound Laker strong man, is a nice quiet person who lifts weights and sometimes separates people’s heads from their shoulders. In one memorable game last November in Buffalo, Washington ended an elbow skirmish with John Shumate by dropping the 6’9” forward with a flurry of hooks and haymakers. ‘Shumate came apart in sections,’ an eyewitness said.”

Wow, punching people never sounded so cool! Since
SI
was the influential sports voice at the time—remember, we didn’t have ESPN,
USA Today
, cable or the Internet yet—the tone of that issue coupled with kudos given to Murphy and Lucas the previous season may have inspired the violent incidents that followed. Lucas was a valuable player who wasn’t good enough to command an
SI
cover unless it was for something
else … you know, like beating the shit out of someone. Was it okay to punch other players in the face? According to
Sports Illustrated
, actually, it was. As long as you had a good reason.

Fast-forward to opening night: Kent Benson sneaks a cheap elbow into Kareem’s stomach, doubling Kareem over and sending him wobbling away from the play in obvious pain. An enraged Kareem regroups and charges Benson from behind, sucker-punching him and breaking his jaw.
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Unlike other ugly NBA events from the past, this one had a black-guy-decking-a-white-guy clip playing on every local newscast around the country, with the black guy doubling as the league’s signature player of the seventies. Uh-oh. The league decides against suspending Kareem, deeming it punishment enough that he’s missing two months with a broken hand from the punch.

Fast-forward to December: Kermit gets belted by Houston’s Kevin Kunnert after a free throw and they start fighting. Kareem jumps in to hold Kunnert back, Kermit nails Kunnert (who slumps over holding his face),
⁸³
then Kermit whirls around, sees Rudy Tomjanovich running toward him and throws what Lakers assistant Jack McKinney later called “the greatest punch in the history of mankind,” breaking Rudy’s face on impact and his skull after it slammed off the floor. Kareem later described the punch as sounding like somebody had dropped a melon onto a concrete floor. Rudy rolled over, grabbed his face, kicked his legs and bled all over the court as everyone watched in horror. The final damage: two weeks in intensive care, a broken jaw, a broken nose, a fractured face and a skull cracked so badly that Rudy could taste spinal fluid dripping into his mouth.

Four forces were working against Kermit other than, you know, the fact he nearly killed another player. With Kareem’s haymaker happening two months earlier, the combination of those punches spawned dueling epidemics
of “NBA Violence Is Out of Control!” headlines and editorials (with everyone forgetting that
SI
had glorified that same violence ten weeks earlier) and “Why do I want to follow a league that allows black guys to keep kicking the crap out of white guys when I’m a white guy?” doubts (the underlying concern that nobody mentioned out loud unless you were sitting in the clubhouse of a country club, as well as the subplot that scared the living shit out of CBS and the owners). Second, the only existing replay made Kermit seem like an unprovoked madman out for white blood, but the cameras missed Kunnert’s initial elbow and the rest of their fight, catching the action only after Kunnert was sinking into Kareem’s arms and Rudy was running at Kermit. Third,
Saturday Night Live
made light of the incident on “Weekend Update,” showing the punch over and over again for a gag and giving it new life.
⁸⁴
And fourth, with TV ratings faltering, attendance dropping and the league battling the “too many white fans, too many black players” issue, really, you couldn’t have asked for worse timing. It was a best/worst extreme—the most destructive punch ever thrown on a basketball court, the perfect specimen to throw such a punch,
⁸⁵
the worst result possible, the worst possible timing (CBS’ contract was up after the season) and the worst possible color combination (a black guy decking a white guy). Kermit was suspended for sixty days without pay—no hearing, no appeal, nothing—losing nearly $54,000 in salary and becoming Public Enemy No. 1. (This went well beyond a few death threats. After Kermit returned from the suspension, police advised him against ordering hotel room service because they worried someone would poison him.) And Rudy eventually sued the league for $3 million, with his laywers portraying Kermit as a vicious Rottweiler who had been allowed off his leash by neglectful owners. Nothing good came from this incident. Nothing.

The Lakers coldly traded Kermit during his suspension, shipping him to Boston for my favorite Celtic at the time, Charlie Scott. Dark day in the Abdul-Simmons house. I remember attending my first Kermit/Celtics game, seeking him out in warm-ups, finding him, and thinking, “That’s him, that’s the guy,” then watching him fearfully like he was like Michael Myers or something. He may have been the league’s first pariah. But Kermit won Boston fans over immediately. Here was this tragic, forlorn figure carrying himself with undeniable dignity, attacking the boards with relentless fury, injecting life into Cowens like nobody had since Silas, throwing every repressed emotion into these games. Sometimes when the Garden was quiet—and that happened a lot, since we only won 32 games and fans were fleeing in droves—you could even hear Kermit grunt when he grabbed a ballboard:
uhhhhhhhhh.
Kermit averaged 11.8 points, 10.5 rebounds and 52 percent shooting in just twenty-seven minutes per game. By the end of the season, Kermit had become my favorite Celtic and I was convinced that Rudy’s face had attacked Kermit’s fist.

Of course, we traded him that summer. Go figure.
⁸⁶
He moved to San Diego and then Portland, where Blazer fans embraced him the way the Boston fans had. When Halberstam wrote beautifully about him a few years later—really, one of the great character profiles ever written of an athlete—Kermit evolved into something of a victim, culminating in John Feinstein writing an entire book about the punch in 2002.
⁸⁷
Maybe Rudy was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but so was Kermit. Like hundreds of NBA players before him, Kermit threw an angry punch with mean-spirited intentions … only this one connected. He became the league’s Hannibal Lecter, the guy who threw The Punch and nearly killed someone. The NBA took violence more seriously after that, making fighting ejections mandatory and handing out longer suspensions, although
it’s turned into somewhat of an urban legend that Kermit’s punch changed everything. The league didn’t make a concerted effort to shed fighting completely until an ugly Knicks-Bulls brawl in the ’94 Playoffs spilled into the stands with a horrified David Stern in attendance.
That
was the tipping point, not Kermit’s punch.

1978–79: LIFE SUPPORT

Here’s where the
perception
that the NBA was in trouble took hold, thanks to tape-delayed playoff games, declining attendance, star players mailing in games, Walton’s continued absence, Buffalo’s move to San Diego, Erving’s disappointing play in Philly, a 75:25 black-to-white ratio and something of a smear campaign from various newspaper columnists and even
Sports Illustrated.
Since sports fans in 1978 and 1979 took their cue from
SI
, everyone was thinking the same thing: “The NBA is in trouble.” Even if it wasn’t necessarily true. With Boston already owning Bird’s draft rights, Indiana State’s undefeated ’79 season assumed greater significance for NBA fans as it unfolded. Bird loomed as the potential savior of a floundering Celtics franchise, and when Bird battled Magic’s Michigan State squad in the 1979 NCAA Finals, that boosted Magic’s profile to savior status as well. By sheer coincidence, two of the league’s three biggest markets (L.A. and Chicago) controlled the first two picks in the ’79 draft. The Lakers won the coin toss and Magic, while Chicago’s ensuing tailspin ended with Jordan saving them five years later. Throw in Boston signing Bird and everyone wins!
⁸⁸
Within a year, Bird saved the Celtics, Magic gave Kareem a pulse for the first time in five years, Philly finally built the right cast of role players around Doc, all three teams won 60-plus games and made the Conference Finals and Magic put himself on the map with the clinching game of the Finals.

A bigger savior was coming that summer: cable. Just weeks after the
NBA signed a three-year, $1.5 million deal with the USA Network for Thursday night doubleheaders and early round playoff games, ESPN launched the first-ever twenty-four-hour sports network on September 7, 1979, paving the way for
SportsCenter
, fun-to-watch highlights, and an eventual competitor for the league’s cable rights. You couldn’t find better advertising than slickly packaged game summaries that featured every exciting dunk, pass, and big shot and left out all the unseemly stuff. (You know, like fistfights, empty seats, utter indifference, and players jogging around and looking spent for the wrong reasons.) For the record, David Stern believes the arrival of ESPN and cable TV had more to do with saving the NBA than Bird and Magic, although he feels like the whole “saving” part has been totally overblown.
⁸⁹
Which it probably was. Remember, the Dallas Mavericks joined in 1980–81 for a cool expansion fee of $12 million, finishing 15–67 that season and spawning countless “Yeesh, maybe they should have had J. R. Ewing coach the team” jokes that were hysterically funny twenty-eight years ago. How bad could things have been if rich guys were throwing out $12 million checks to join the NBA?

Still, here’s how much the NBA/CBS relationship had deteriorated: Despite being given two appealing Conference Finals in 1980 (Boston-Philly and L. A.-Phoenix), CBS showed only three games live, broadcast another three on tape delay and completely ignored the other four (including a pivotal Game 4 in Phoenix).
⁹⁰
When they landed Kareem, Magic and Doc in the Finals, they made the Lakers and Sixers play Games 3 and 4 back-to-back on a Saturday/Sunday, then gave affiliates the option of airing Game 6 (a potential clincher) either live or on tape delay at eleven-thirty at night. Since it was a Friday during May sweeps, nearly every affiliate opted for reruns of
The Incredible Hulk, The Dukes of Hazzard
and
Dallas
, with only the Philly, L.A., Portland and Seattle markets carrying the game live. That meant one of the most famous basketball games ever played
(Magic starting at center in place of an injured Kareem, then carrying the Lakers to the title) happened well after midnight on tape delay in nearly every American city. Think how many young fans could have been sucked in for life. On the other hand, can you really blame the CBS affiliates there? I mean, both
The Incredible Hulk
and
Dukes of Hazzard
plus
Dallas
to boot? That was a murderer’s row! After a three-minute Googling frenzy, I can report that
Dallas
and
Dukes were
the top two shows in 1980;
Dukes
had about 21 million viewers and
Dallas
had a jaw-dropping 27 million. Obviously they weren’t dumping those shows for an episode of
The League with Overpaid Black Guys Who Do Drugs.
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That’s just a bad business decision. So yeah, it stinks that nobody watched Magic’s famous 42-point game live. But it stinks more that the NBA screwed up by not scheduling that game for Saturday afternoon so everyone could see it.
⁹²

One year later, the unthinkable happened: even though a star-studded affair between Philly and Boston doubled as the greatest Conference Final ever played, CBS aired only nine of a possible fourteen Final Four games (six of those nine were tape-delayed) and showed four of the six ’81 Finals games on tape delay (including the clincher). In a related story, the broadcast of the ’81 Finals was the lowest-rated in history (6.7)
⁹³
and an improbable ’81 Western Finals matchup between the 40–42 Rockets and 40–42 Kings probably made CBS consider the first-ever tape delay of a tape-delayed telecast.
⁹⁴
So yes, the NBA needed cable. Badly.