Authors: John Feinstein, Terry Adams
ISBN-13: 9780316735636, ISBN-10: 0316735639
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Date Published: November 2003
Edition: Reprint
John Feinstein tells the amazing story of one moment of aggression that changed two lives, the NBA, and how we think about basketball forever.
Feinstein's latest (after The Last Amateurs) tears the scab off one of the deepest wounds in the history of professional sports. In 1977, during a Lakers-Rockets match, L.A. forward Kermit Washington forever altered the course of his career and that of Houston's Rudy Tomjanovich when he threw a punch that nearly killed the Rockets' captain. From that moment on, each man's life became defined by the incident and its aftermath. Seamlessly weaving the event itself into the fabric of pro basketball's rocky pre-Magic/Bird/Jordan history of constantly relocating franchises, dismal television support and chronic violence, Feinstein tells a moving story of two men branded by a moment frozen in time, and how the incident changed the game it could well have destroyed. The narrative never gets mired in the fawning sycophantism of many sports books or the moral proselytizing of many others. Feinstein's research is sharp, and his time line jumps around effortlessly, like a good Quentin Tarantino film. Most importantly, the author sustains the balance between Washington's burden of guilt and the genuine misfortune that has followed him since. He's a sympathetic character, almost uniformly described as a smart, good-hearted man bearing the never-healing scar of the one great mistake in his life. Yet he is by no means the saint he might have us believe him to be. Feinstein's portrait of each man is compelling; neither is lionized or demonized. Rather, the complexity of the incident and the depth of the personal trauma for both Tomjanovich and Washington fester under the author's microscope in this excellent and engaging book. (Nov.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Introduction | xiii | |
1. | What Hit Me? | 3 |
2. | An Overcast Friday | 16 |
3. | That Was Then ... | 35 |
4. | Did You Hear About Rudy and Kermit? | 51 |
5. | Who Hit Whom? | 68 |
6. | Sixty Days and Ten Thousand Dollars | 80 |
7. | Red to the Rescue | 94 |
8. | Too Soon to Dream | 110 |
9. | Welfare Memories | 124 |
10. | Dreams Can Come True | 136 |
11. | From Hamtramck to Ann Arbor to San Diego | 156 |
12. | The Bright Lights of L.A. | 177 |
13. | Turnaround | 197 |
14. | The Punch | 208 |
15. | A New Life | 216 |
16. | Recovery | 233 |
17. | Life Goes On | 247 |
18. | Time to Move On | 264 |
19. | Starting Over | 280 |
20. | Finding a Niche | 298 |
21. | Troubles | 312 |
22. | No Peace to Be Found | 326 |
23. | Brothers | 341 |
Acknowledgments | 347 | |
Index | 353 |