Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever
    The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever
    The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever

    Written by John Feinstein

    Narrated by Richard Davidson

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Tearing open the deepest wound in professional sports, Feinstein uncovers the secrets of the NBA before and after that fateful moment in December of 1977 whe the face of professional hoops was changed forever. It was a chilly December evening and the Los Angeles Coliseum was buzzing as the Lakers hosted the Houston Rockets. As two players, Houston's Rudy Tomajanovich and LA's Kermit Washington were warming up, they were unaware their lives were about to be destroyed. The game began and as Tomjanovich trailed a play up the court, a small skirmish broke out between Washington and another Rocket player. Dropping the ball, Tomjanovich approached the tussling men hoping to break up the fight and resume the game. But instead, his face met the powerful fist of Kermit Washington. The punch, so brutal on impact, left most of the bones in Tomjanovich's face broken and spinal fluid leaking from cracked vertebrae. Although he nearly died, Tomjanovich recovered from his injuries. But his game was never the same. After a two month suspension, Washington retook the court but had lost his touch. His snap reaction had irrevocably killed two careers--and the way the NBA played basketball forever.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 10, 2008
    ISBN9781440798771
    The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever
    Author

    John Feinstein

    John Feinstein is the author of many bestselling books, including A Good Walk Spoiled and One on One. He writes for the Washington Post and Golf Digest and is a regular contributor to the Golf Channel.

    More audiobooks from John Feinstein

    Related to The Punch

    Related audiobooks

    Sports & Recreation For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      In Memoriam

      Feb 13, 2023

      In Memoriam
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Q&A with Mike Schmidt:

      Jan 17, 2020

      Fan: Mike, even though you’re one of the Top 10 players in baseball history, I think you were underappreciated in Philadelphia, probably because you made it look so easy. I know it wasn’t easy and that you worked hard. Is that how you see it? Schmidt

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Cobra

      Jan 21, 2022

      The Cobra
      4 min read

    • Article

      Top International Prospects For 2022

      Jan 7, 2022

      For the second year in a row, Major League Baseball postponed the start date of the international signing period by six months. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the signing period opened each year on July 2. The 2021-22 signing period opens on Jan.

      17 min read

    • Article

      Martin O’neill

      Dec 8, 2022

      Martin O’neill
      16 min read

    • Article

      JIM BROWN THE GREATEST Sharing Max Patkin Memories, Collectibles

      Jun 6, 2023

      SCD encourages a diversity of voices and views. Please limit letters to 200-400 words and include your name, city and state. SCD reserves the right to edit all letters for length and clarity. Please email letters to jowens@aimmedia.com. The news arti

      3 min read

    • Article

      Dante’s Paradise

      May 23, 2023

      Dante’s Paradise
      3 min read

    • Article

      Barbra Streisand No regrets

      Nov 30, 2023

      Barbra Streisand No regrets
      10 min read

    • Article

      Barbra Streisand No regrets

      Nov 30, 2023

      Barbra Streisand No regrets
      10 min read

    • Article

      Reconciling America’s Original Sin: The Millions Interviews Deanne Stillman

      Nov 7, 2017

      I think it’s kind of a universal situation—that sooner or later we often find ourselves accepted for being one thing, but in our hearts we’re something else. The post Reconciling America’s Original Sin: The Millions Interviews Deanne Stillman a

      8 min read

    • Article

      Andy, According to Kelly

      Aug 17, 2018

      Andy, According to Kelly
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Failing Upward

      Jul 25, 2018

      The Art of Failing Upward
      4 min read

    • Article

      'The Pain Never Ebbs. The Tears Never Dry. But They Are Proof That My Brother, Rob, Mattered'

      Sep 10, 2018

      Last week, a California man was arrested for threatening to assassinate journalists at the Boston Globe newspaper. In a series of phone calls, the suspect lashed the Globe for its editorials critical of Donald Trump and parroted a phrase often bellow

      6 min read

    • Article

      Celebrities? They’re All A Bit Weird … Hadley Freeman On 22 Years Interviewing Stars

      Nov 25, 2022

      I started working at the Guardian in the summer of 2000 – not to write, but to look after a key. The key to the fashion cupboard, to be precise, ensuring no clothes for the fashion shoots were stolen. This was my primary role as the fashion assistant

      7 min read

    • Article

      Between Falls

      Jul 5, 2018

      SEND LETTERS TO: BETWEEN FALLS Box 96 Ft. Washington, PA 19034 Or you can e-mail your comments to prowrestlingillustrated@yahoo.com PRO WRESTLING ILLUSTRATED welcomes reader’s comments on any of our stories or columns. Did we select the cover photo f

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Punch

    3.5/5

    76 ratings7 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      As a reader that is not a basketball fan, maybe I am giving this a biased rating. It was an interesting story. Feinstein does a good job illustrating the difference in the rules and regulations, and even the culture, before and after the fateful Punch. Unfortunately he circles around the event over and over, repeating many of the same facts. He focuses more on Washington's side of the story--but then, he does mention in the introduction that Washington was much more willing to talk about the event than Tomjanovich. Feinstein did a very good job relaying their early biographies, but the whole book comes off as unpolished.
    • 3/5
      Feinstein is a great writer, this book was FILLED with information and anecdotes, but it flowed very nicely. However, I felt that there were parts that were really repetitious. Also, I felt that there was a skew towards Kermitt's side of things. I kinda started to get bored towards the end but I am glad that I pushed through to the end.
    • 3/5
      John Feinstein, a fabulous sports writer, recounts one of the ugliest nights in NBA history. A game between the Houston Rockets and the LA Lakers erupted into a fist fight. During this fight, Kermit Washington threw a punch that hit Rudy Tomjanovich so hard that it dislodged his skull and nearly killed him. After the fight - neither man was ever the same again. Feinstein looks at the aftermath of what happened to these two men. He takes us up close and personal inside the lives of these two great athletes and shows us how this one punch changed two lives, the sport of basketball, and society from that point.
    • 1/5
      Don't get your ticket punched for this one. While the story of the incident would make a good read, when you don't have good writing or editing, a book strikes out. Oops! Wrong sport. It fouls out!
    • 2/5
      40/20 left to read until 300 The book The Punch is about a moment during a basketball game when a fight broke out and a really big punch that changed two people's lives. It talked about what the two players did before and after the punch. I thought that this book was doing very well in the beginning and then got uninteresting as it went along. After the description of the punch in the beginning, the author, John Feinstein, talked about the two players' lives before and after, which did not interest me. I can't really say how I relate to this book since I only read 40 pages of it.
    • 4/5
      It has been almost thirty years now (December 9, 1977) since a single ten-second snippet of NBA history forever changed the way that the game of professional basketball is played. On that evening in Los Angeles, Houston Rockets star Rudy Tomjanovich was almost killed by a single punch thrown by Kermit Washington of the Los Angeles Lakers. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, no one realized the tremendous impact that Tomjanovich’s injury would have, not only on the lives of the two men directly involved, but on the league itself. John Feinstein’s The Punch explains how the paths of Rudy Tomjanovich and Kermit Washington crossed that night in what was really more an accident than a fight and how they have become forever linked in the minds of basketball fans, something about which neither man is happy.In one very important sense, the NBA of the 1970s resembled the game of hockey as it is played in the NHL. NBA teams depended on superstars to score points and to convince people to buy tickets. Team owners and managers realized that those superstars needed to be protected because their injury or ejection would make or break a team’s whole season. For that reason, NBA teams almost always had someone on the floor to serve as the team’s enforcer, someone who would make sure that their superstar was not injured in a fight, someone who would often fight the superstar’s fight in his place, in fact. Kermit Washington, a fine player in his own right, also served as enforcer for the Los Angeles Lakers and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.Washington found himself coming to Abdul-Jabbar’s rescue again on that fateful night, something he was used to doing on a regular basis for the hot tempered Abdul-Jabbar. As the players were running from one end of the basketball court to the other, Washington noticed that Abdul-Jabbar was becoming frustrated with the pushing and shoving he was receiving under the basket at the hands of Houston’s Kevin Kunnert so he stayed close to the two men rather than running to the other end of the floor. Tomjanovich, Houston’s team captain, noticed from his end of the court that his teammate was being manhandled by two Lakers and rushed in to break up the fight. As he approached Washington from behind, with his hands down, Washington turned suddenly and threw a single punch at Tomjanovich. The combination of Washington’s strength, the speed at which Tomjanovich was approaching Washington’s fist, and the exact location of the punch left Tomjanovich on the floor in a huge pool of blood.Tomjanovich, who doctors say was lucky to survive the kind of punch that dislodged his skull, did not play again that season. Washington was suspended without pay for sixty days and his career was never really the same again. NBA rules governing player fights grew out of what happened that night because it made league officials aware of the great danger of letting men the size of professional basketball players take swings at each other. The league tightened up to such an extent that even players on the periphery of a fight were subject to fines and suspensions, especially those coming off the bench to involve themselves. Just as importantly, the lives of Kermit Washington and Rudy Tomjanovich would never be the same. No matter what either player ever achieved on or off the court, each would always be remembered first for “the punch.” Each of the men played for several more seasons, and Tomjanovich even coached the Houston Rockets to two NBA championships in the nineties, but both of them are still haunted by what happened during ten seconds of one of the thousands of basketball games they played during their lives.John Feinstein was able to get both men, their families, and many of the players and coaches who were on the floor that night to share their memories. Rudy Tomjanovich, try as he might, cannot get over the feeling that everyone he meets thinks of him as the player “who got nailed.” Kermit Washington has spent his life trying to convince people that he is not a thug who almost killed someone with a sucker punch in a fit of anger. Feinstein gives equal time to both men, exploring their childhoods, their days as amateur basketball stars, and their professional careers. He does not take sides or make excuses for what happened that night. Instead, he lets both men tell their versions of what happened and how that has affected their lives ever since. Strangely enough, it is Kermit Washington who seems to be having the hardest time dealing with the whole thing. Washington seems to have become somewhat paranoid about what he did and still blames the hit his reputation took that night for everything bad that has happened to him since then. As pointed out by John Lucas, an ex-player who made plenty mistakes of his own, Washington needs to finally just say, “I’m sorry. I screwed up.” He will never find the closure that Tomjanovich seems to have found until he stops saying, “I’m sorry, but…”Rated at: 4.0
    • 4/5
      A fair-handed, intense account of a near-fatal encounter between two large, strong, well-conditioned, competitive young men in an instant of time. Feinstein does a good job of seeing the whole picture - not only examining the characters of both men, but of the NBA climate of the time, and the entire sequence of events leading up to "the punch."