December 9th, 1977 - A reminder that it's no joke when these guys start fighting each other, and why the NBA made such a big deal of the Detroit / Indiana fight last year.

When something told Kermit Washington he was about to be attacked from the rear, he wheeled and threw a punch. In time he would explain the punch as an instinctive reaction to a fear acquired in a schoolyard fight. Never again, he had resolved, would he allow himself to be jumped by an unseen assailant.

What he didn't know, couldn't know, may not have cared to know--for by then he had become an NBA "enforcer" whose unwritten duties included the delivery of punishment for slights against Lakers teammate Kareem Abdul-Jabbar--was that the man running toward him had no intention of fighting...

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1208/is_45_226/ai_94334802