Let’s get past the elements in which this revolves around New York, because as a Southern Midwesterner (or Midwestern Southerner, take your pick), I know most of what I know about New York from friends and various films. Though I will say the films, television, books, and radio programs do paint quite the vivid picture of a thriving metropolis! So yes, the fact that this team is primed to finally be relevant, while not dominant, is particularly culturally relevant for the city. And yes, a resurgence there does speak quite plainly to a mythos that has been held in the old barn and echoed throughout the boroughs. But let’s try and move past that to what this team could resemble.

Yes. Indeed.

Pointless. Frantic. Exhilarating ABA ish.

Let’s address some issues.

The Knicks Won’t Be Good.

This is my favorite response when you mention that the Knicks will be fun as hell to watch next season. “Yeah, but they won’t be any good.” Which is bizarre in and of itself. You know who will be good this year? The Lakers, Heat, Celtics, Magic, Bulls, and probably 1-2 Western teams which are yet to be determined. Those teams will be good. Only two, and if we’re lucky, three, will be great. The rest are just fodder for the great maw that is the NBA elite. And yeah, the Knicks, given their market, payroll, and history, should be better. But your franchise is going to have good times, bad times, and a lot of time in between. The Lakers were a first-round-exit machine in the mid-decade, for crying out loud. Yet the story goes that we’re to ignore this whole thing simply because they had cap space and failed to acquire one of three individuals who were actually planning on going to the same place for years, and despite the fact that Chris Bosh may not be considerably better than Amar’e Stoudemire, all things considered.

But all that is circumstance. Let’s get down to what this is about. Defense, and the lack thereof.

I’m not trying to abdicate the value of defense. The Knicks can not be, under any reasonable set of expectations or circumstances, an elite team, and almost all of that has to do with their lack of defense. From personnel, to system, to approach, their team is built to sufficiently ignore defense. The only reason they even acknowledge its existence is to get the ball back. Bear in mind I’m a believer that the D’Antoni Defensive Sieve is a myth. His Suns teams were far from stalwarts but nor were they the Raptors of last season. They were fine. Just not fine enough, especially not for the grotesque, misshapen, UFC-style ball that makes up the NBA playoffs. But even I can recognize that this cohesive roster is going to be abhorrent on defense. Ronny Turiaf puts in great effort. Not a good defensive element. Stoudemire’s defense has been well documented, and while I maintain he’s hyper-criticized beyond his actual shortcomings, he’s not a good defender by any stretch of the imagination. The rest of the roster is the same. Felton was never a standout defensively, even on a defensive squad like LB’s Cats. Galinari was born into D’Antoni’s defenseless womb. Anthony Randolph is described by my esteemed colleague the same way some are spoken of as rocks with mouths. All in all, the Knicks are likely to be dreadful on defense.

Who cares?

To take the sting off of it a little bit, consider the report coming out about a possible starting five of Felton-Gallinari-Randolph-Stoudemire-Turiaf. That’s a lot of size right there. Even with the waif-like wings, you’re still looking at considerable height to provide a rebounding asset, if not advantage. But if we move past defense and accept that this team is only marginally likely to make the playoffs and if they do, they are likely fodder, we have to see how bloody fun this team is apt to be. Forget the whole Warriors-Raptors concepts of the last few years, those teams were built on a system which then went out and got whatever players were affordably priced for what they were attempting (or in the Raptors case, reasonably priced with a few plastic explosive exceptions). And forget even the Suns, who were dependent on one player’s brilliance, and the other players’ ability to siphon off that player (yes, one of them is the same player who is now the lynch pin in our Madison Square Petrie Dish). This is just tall, athletic guys who can throw the round thing in the circular thing repeatedly.

It’s still a D’Antoni team, no doubt. But what’s notable is not what elements are at play in New York, but how they’re arranged. In Phoenix, he played with refinement at point guard, quickness/speed and barrage at shooting guard (Johnson/Bell/Barbosa), versatility at small forward, and some combination of perplexity and violence at power-forward and center (Stoudemire-Diaw/Marion/Thomas). In New York, he’s assembling something with a workhorse at point guard, purity and athleticism at the wings, violence at the power forward, and function at center. The question is if this is what he wants or if this is the base of the soup that he’s hoping will become something else. Hoping, for example, that Raymond Felton becomes a source of refinement at point guard? That’s not going to lead anywhere good for his liver. Hoping Randolph accepts a traditional role? Wasting his breath. Wishing Turiaf to be versatile? Reasonable but ultimately pointless. They are what they are. This isn’t to say they can’t collectively be something else, especially with a bench that’s just as full of misfit toys that can still wind their springs as any. But it does mean that any attempts to force evolution will be as useful as gluing feathers to a brontosaurus. It’ll happen in due time.

The limits of this team are fascinating, though. Not just the Suns driven by the point guard whipping to perimeter spot-ups but constant catch-go-move-throw. But floaters. Trailer threes by the busload. Offensive rebounds by the truckload (seriously, their defensive rebounding will be systemically suspect, but they’re going to get tap-backs). Pull-ups on loop.

A trade is looming, and with good reason. Donnie Walsh’s job is to win a championship, not speak to relics. But if this particular team makes it together, they’ll be something to watch. Nothing moving, or transcendent, but fun, capable, and complex. There’s nothing obvious about New York, other than the fact they won’t be winning a championship this year. They could very well win as many or fewer games as last year. They could make the 7th seed. It’s negligible, as unless they make a significant move towards Chris Paul’s toast, that’s what they are as far as the common fan is concerned. Toast. But that’s what’s great about Knicks fans. They’re not common fans.

Maybe the best way to describe this team is as a heartbreaker. Young, pristine, driving a really cool car and occasionally getting grounded for weeks on end. They won’t be together forever and when they’re blown apart, it’ll never be the same. But those moments in youth are still something to revel in while they’re around.

Growing up is painful, inevitable, and rote. Let the kids have their fun.

There are lessons to be learned from John Feinstein’s book about Rudy Tomjanovich and Kermit Washington, The Punch.

Violence Begets Violence.

The violence that we seem to wholeheartedly celebrate in an earlier generation was curbed for a reason. It wasn’t The Punch. The Punch was simply the abscess that revealed the rot. This isn’t a “it looks really bad for the league” type rot. It’s a rot that made clears clear the league was headed for a full-on cave-in if it was not rectified. Most terrifyingly, Rudy Tomjanovich nearly became that cave in. Terrifying in the sense that Tomjanovich could have died. This is not exaggeration. This is not hypersensitivity.

Eleven pages into the opening chapter of Feinstein’s book, Dr. Paul Toffel is standing in the Emergency Room at Centinela Hospital in Los Angeles, talking to Rudy Tomjanovich, then a 29-year-old All-Star who very much wanted to return to the game. Toffel asks Rudy a question. Toffel is a head trauma expert called in the aftermath of the punch. The question at first seems odd, and then a feeling of dread passes over you, the way a sharp twist in a horror novel or film makes the hair on your arms stand up. It’s a simple question.

“‘Rudy, let me ask you a question,’ he said. ‘Do you have any kind of funny taste in your mouth?’

Tomjanovich’s eyes opened slowly. ‘Yeah, I do,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t taste like blood either. It’s very bitter. What is it?’

‘Spinal fluid,’ Toffel said. ‘You’re leaking spinal fluid from your brain. We’re going to get you up to ICU in a few minutes and we’re going to hope your brain capsule seals soon.’”

And with that, those who did not understand what The Punch was begin to know just how truly horrifying violence on the floor can be. We can sit on barstools, on television studio sets, around water coolers and talk about how the NBA has become full of soft players. And to be sure, the fierce physicality of the NBA carried on well past The Punch. But it set in motion the acceleration of a movement that was birthed the summer prior to The Punch, when the owners came to an agreement to give the commissioner the power to more heavily fine players and to suspend them indefinitely. The fights had gotten out of control, and that trend had continued when the ’77 season began.

There is an element of the story that drives home this lesson. In Buffalo during the ’76-’77 season, Washington had been involved in a fight with John Shumate of the Buffalo Braves. During that fight, members of the Braves had jumped on Washington’s back from behind. This put a significant fear of being attacked from behind in Washington. Less than a year later, Rudy Tomjanovich would approach the fight where Washington was involved from behind. Tomjanovich had not intention of leaping on Washington’s back, or fighting, really. But when the Braves bench became involved in that fight, it created a chain reaction that would partially influence what went  through Washington’s brain before he swung. That’s what we’re left with. The more players fight, the better the chance that we face the possibility of an event beyond what we think is allowable. We like the idea of Kevin Garnett and Pau Gasol trading elbows (yeah, that should work out well), but we certainly don’t want anyone to be seriously hurt. Do you recognize how insane that sounds?

“YES, OF COURSE I WANT GIGANTIC HUMAN BEINGS WITH MASSIVE POWER TO THROW VIOLENT SWINGS TOWARD ONE ANOTHER! I JUST DON’T WANT ANYONE TO GET SERIOUSLY HURT! WHY IS THIS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND?”

So the next time your favorite player gets a little wound up and tosses a punch or throws a player and then gets suspended, consider that it’s a lot like throwing up debris to try and slow down a runaway train (never goin’ back). With enough velocity, nothing’s going to stop it (Ron Artest). That still means you try like hell to slow it down enough to keep it out of the ravine.

Don’t Judge A Book By Its Number Of Ejections

Pop Quiz.

Which of the two players involved in The Punch was an Academic All-American?

The fact that I’m asking should give you a pretty good hint that it was Washington, and not Tomjanovich. This stunned me. I like to think that it wasn’t a racial issue, though I don’t have a frame by frame breakdown of my initial mental reaction to that fact to say for sure.  I can say that it was more Washington’s reputation as an enforcer and his lasting image as the player that threw The Punch that led to that shock settling in. But it’s true. Washington graduated with a 3.37 GPA and a BA in Sociology. The guy that threw The Punch whipped my performance in college.

And after reading the book, you’re left with a number of changed perspectives about Washington. He never thought of himself as an enforcer, never took pride in that part of his game. It was simply an element he was called upon to do. He possessed the kind of work ethic that we constantly wish players would emulate. The book reveals a portrait of… a person.

Obvious right? Yes, Kermit Washington is a person. Thanks for that, Matt. My point is that to elaborate on how complex Washington is revealed to be is to underestimate how complex most people are. He’s simultaneously a devoted teammate and a moody player that’s unable to to deal plainly with his situation. He expresses very real remorse for what happened to Rudy while blaming Kevin Kunnert for starting the fracas that led to the swing, despite being Kunnert’s teammate for years. He’s not any more layered, likable, or pained than most of the people you know in your life, or you yourself. The book paints Washington as both selfish and selfless, considerate and insensitive, self-aware and oblivious. He’s the Nowhere Man, plastered on YouTube and history retrospectives for all time because of a poor decision.

A League Drawn Upon Itself Many Times Over

The book reveals Tomjanovich’s endless feeling of inadequacy and his drive to disprove that self-assessment. That same drive pushes him to be an All-Star in the NBA. Which leads to him starting. Which leads to the punch. Which leads to the timing that sets up his availability as a coach. Which contributes to both his NBA Championship rings and his battle with alcoholism.

That night in 1977, Jerry West was coaching the Lakers. Rudy Tomjanovich wound up coaching the Lakers for a season and still works as a consultant for the very team that unwillingly contributed to the shortening of his career. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is described in the book as being moody, difficult, and wary of physical contact. In 2009, media members criticized Lakers center Andrew Bynum for not finishing his training with Kareem, despite all of these well known issues with him. By “media members” I mean, me. The Braves were the team that jumped Washington from behind (though Washington was clearly an equal contributor to the fight). The Braves would later move to San Diego and rename themselves the Clippers, and then move to Los Angeles, where they continue to spread misery and pain, only now just to their fans.

Red Auerbach was a significant positive force for Washington, trading for him after The Punch.

That same move to San Diego? It was part of an ownership swap in the league that also sent several contracts, including Washington’s, to San Diego, from the Celtics. That same summer, the new ownership helped Auerbach sign a player that hadn’t entered the draft yet. AND HIS NAME… WAS LARRY BIRD. AND NOW YOU KNOW THE REST OF THE HIGHLY PREDICTABLE STORY.

The point is that we think of the league in eras. Players exist in a time frame, are dominant in a time frame, and then retire in the next time frame. But these same players and personnel have long reaching affects that impact teams, players, coaches, and personnel from generation to generation. And though Feinstein’s work is about the two players and how that night scarred them both, the book had me tossing it across the room several times saying “Whoa” like Keanu.

The Story Itself

It’s a sad book. You feel bad for everyone. The players that were there that night sound haunted by the events, especially Calvin Murphy, one of Tomjanovich’s best friends. The book ends, in ironic fashion, talking about how both players can’t stand how often it’s brought up. I feel guilty for even writing this review. But Feinstein’s work deserve to be noted for contributing to our history of the league. It’s a companion to “Breaks of the Game,” an insight into life as an NBA player, a history lesson, a portrait, and a parable. The book doesn’t come off as heavy-handed, nor overdramatic. It doesn’t subscribe to any higher arching themes. It’s the story of two lives that intersected in a moment of violence and terror that neither intended, and that both have had to live with for the rest of their lives.

There are points that Feinstein ignores out of consideration. He rarely touches the real damage Tomjanovich faced that night. He only briefly touches on the lasting denial Washington lives in throughout the book, though it’s enough to make an impact during the conclusion. He sometimes seems resolute in hammering home themes that don’t really serve to convince us of who both players were. But those same themes do ring true as part of the story, an element that lacquers their histories. An update to the book following the past 10 years, or really, just Ron Artest, would be fascinating, particularly through the lens of David Stern and his adjustments to O’Brien’s policies. But at the end of the day, Feinstein manages to captivate without losing perspective.

If you want a good story about how the league was altered by a single incident, you should read it.

If you want to learn more about who Kermit Washington and Rudy Tomjanovich really were, really are, you should read it.

If you want a damn fine basketball book, you should read it.

Score (out of 5): 4.5

More reading:

Tomjanovich and Washington meet following publication of The Punch

Washington speaks about Blount from Oregon

Washington’s Good Life

Buy it on Amazon

Dear Diary,

I’m SO excited to be in LAS VEGAS, BABY! All the people are super nice and I really think this year is going to be a special one! Oh My Gosh, the flight was super-long and I was all cramped in the corner. Additionally, Continental puts the seat recline button on the right hand side when you’re window, so if you lean into the wall to get away from Smelly McGee, you keep accidentally pushing your seat back and spilling the drunk chick behind you’s drink! I LMAO, 4 realz.

The TrueHoop House is great, all of us staying here, it’s just like camp! Only with cheap beer and constant battles over exactly how bad David Kahn is at his job! Zach Harper was super-nice and came to get me from the airport, before I started reminding him of David Kahn’s last sixty days, forcing him into a binge. Then we all had drinks and ate pizza! Best slumber-party, EVAR! I bet this is way better than SBNation’s Summer League house, which is probably just a bunch of their readers standing on each other’s shoulders, forming a makeshift tent. LOL!

I’m super-excited to see my BFF Alonzo Gee today, and really think today is the day that Rhymes-With-Holiday Aminu is going to show people why he’s just as good as his brother. I can’t wait to get to the arena and check out all the “action.” G2G, Kurt Helin is picking me up for breakfast! I think I’ll have waffles and bacon!

Love,

Matt

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