In America, professional basketball obviously exhibits the most publicized and canonized basketball brawls, but we’ll get to them in a moment. College basketball has its fair share of demons and bad blood that exploded into moments of embarrassing violence. One of the low points occurred in 1972 during a game between the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Minnesota Golden Gophers. In the YouTube clip below, you can see that the Ohio State center is fouled hard with only 36 seconds left in the game; a Minnesota player offers to help him up, and in a nearly unprecedented bit of unsportsmanlike conduct, knees the dude in the groin afterward. Benches cleared and a disastrous fight ensued.

The NBA saw its fair share of fights during the 1970s and 80s. One of the more despicable fights basically ended with one punch. On December 9^th, 1977, a fight broke out during a game between the Houston Rockets and the Los Angeles Lakers. During the melee, Rockets player Rudy Tomjanovich rushed to center court; Lakers player Kermit Washington interpreted this rush as an attack and delivered a devastating punch that shattered Tomjanovich’s jaw and cheekbone. He nearly died from the punch, and Washington’s career was never the same afterward.