Rockets book excerpt: Rudy Tomjanovich and moving on from The Punch

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/rockets/article/Rockets-book-excerpt-Rudy-Tomjanovich-and-moving-13315028.php

By Jonathan Feigen, Houston Rockets Beat Reporter

Oct 17, 2018

In a Dec. 9, 1977 game, Lakers forward Kermit Washington (right) threw the punch that altered Rudy Tomjanovich's career and changed both their lives.

Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from Houston Chronicle staff writer Jonathan Feigen's upcoming book "100 Things Rockets Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die." The book will be released Oct. 23. For more information or to order a copy please click here.

Kermit Washington reached his hand—that right hand, the hand that changed everything—toward Rudy Tomjanovich. This time, Tomjanovich smiled, happy to see it.

Nearly 25 years after Washington turned and landed the punch that nearly killed Tomjanovich, changed both their lives, and forever altered the way the sport looked at the sort of on-court violence that had once been viewed as inevitable, Tomjanovich and Washington came together in Oakland to move on in the one, final way they had not.

For Tomjanovich, this was part of his mindset, gained through years of self-examination. Washington, then 50 years old, was still something of an NBA pariah and nervous, unsure how he would be viewed by the man he so badly injured all those years before.

Then they shook hands, clapped backs, and moved on. They joked that day about the way the game has changed, even mentioning the way teams in their time all had players labeled “enforcers” as if unaware of the irony of their sharing that conversation. Perhaps at last that no longer mattered to them. They had left that horrible night behind them.

“When something like that happens in a person’s life, there has to be healing — physical healing and emotional healing,” Tomjanovich said the day he and Washington finally met in 2002 outside the Golden State Warriors practice facility. “The physical heals. Nature and medicine take care of that. I have nothing to do with that. The emotional healing has everything to do with me.”