Still at It

They began even before the summer ended; they dribbled their way all through the winter, and last week, as spring came north once more, they were still at it. The oversized pros of the National Basketball Association were playing overtime,as they went through the motions of a championship playoff that may well run on almost till Easter. Months ago, the long schedule made clear that the Boston Celtics are easily the class of the league (TIME, Dec. 22), the best at the game's swift art of dunking baskets while elbows dig and feet flail and the referee's whistle skirls its endless interruptions.

But last week, as the Celtics beat back the Philadelphia Warriors in the Eastern Division playoff, and the Los Angeles Lakers toppled the Detroit Pistons in the Western Division, even the pros seemed a little tired of it all. Contact on the court came often and carelessly; the fouls were no longer subtle. In one game, the Celtics' defensive specialist Bill Russell seemed determined to stomp the opposition down (see cut). Pile-ups under the basket were alive with flying elbows. Tempers flared, and the Celtics' Sam Jones (6 ft. 4 in.) picked up a photographer's stool to threaten the Warriors' giant Wilt Chamberlain (7 ft. 2 in.). Boston's Carl Braun and Philadelphia's Guy Rodgers squared off in a brief scrap that brought hundreds of spectators onto the floor. Once that was over, Rodgers picked a new target: Jim Loscutoff, one of the burliest Celtics of all. Fist fights started so often that the league's roly-poly President Maurice Podoloff slapped fines on five players.

And there is still more basketball to come. The N.B.A. playoffs can conceivably add up to a total of 31 games (including semifinals and finals in East and West, plus a championship series). But though the players may be bored, their ribs aching, their elbows skinned and their noses bloody, they are not likely to squawk too loudly. Their combined payoff from the playoffs will total $125,000.

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