Rudy Tomjanovich

Rudolph Tomjanovich (* November 24, 1948 in Hamtramck, Michigan ) is a retired American basketball player and coach of Croatian descent.

From 1970 to 1981 he played in the U.S. professional league NBA for the Houston Rockets ( to 1971 San Diego Rockets ). From 1992 he was hired as head coach of the Rockets and led the team in 1994 and 1995 to the first NBA championship in club history.

In 2003 he resigned for health reasons from his coaching job. Short term he took over in the 2004/05 season the head coach job with the Los Angeles Lakers, but then came back after half of the season.

The Punch

An incident on December 9, 1977 slowed his brilliant career as a player. On the day the Los Angeles Lakers played the Houston Rockets. After a hard foul came Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the Lakers and a teammate Tomjanovichs together. Kermit Washington was issued as at that time the part of the Lakers, Jabbar protect while Tomjanovich wanted simple. Washington wanted to protect himself because he. , In his youth, in a rough area of Washington DC, traumatic experiences with attacks from behind had to learn, and responded to the onrushing Tomjanovich with a punch This broke Tomjanovich 's jaw and pushed his nose into his brain. He fell to the floor and pulled it to a fractured skull.

Tomjanovich recovered fully, but never again reached the form as he held immediately prior to the incident. Washington was suspended for 60 days and had to pay a fine of $ 10,000 and had more salary cuts of about $ 50,000. Washington's career came to a halt after this incident, and he was getraded two weeks later to Boston. He was attacked from many sides and could never achieve its objectives in the political sphere. Washington said that he would love to get into a time machine to make the events reversed. Tomjanovich was announced in 2008 that he had forgiven him.

• Basketball player (United States)
• Basketball coach (United States)
• Born in 1948
• Man