Rollerball the Celtic Way--Loscutoff to McHale to Parish

K.C. Jones, the Amy Vanderbilt of the National Basketball Assn., watched a body slam administered to Larry Bird by Bill Laimbeer and deemed it an unpardonable breach of etiquette. The league office agreed and fined Laimbeer $5,000.

“That’s not what basketball is all about,” sniffed K.C., who coaches the Boston Celtics. “I’m really disappointed in Laimbeer.”

Imagine how disappointed Jones must be in Laimbeer now. Tuesday night, the uncouth Detroit player--is that redundant?--apparently used an elbow to jockey for rebounding position. This is more disgusting than eating peas with a knife, or ignoring an RSVP.

Laimbeer was immediately reprimanded by Celtic center Robert Parish, who hammered Laimbeer to the floor with two hearty blind-side whacks to the face, an attack reminiscent of the shower scene in “Psycho.”

Spare the rod and spoil the Piston.

The league office, misinterpreting Parish’s corrective discipline as an act of simple thuggery, fined Parish $7,500 and suspended him for a game.

Don’t worry about the fine, Celtic fans. It’s equivalent to $100 for a guy who makes $20,000 a year. Besides, Parish can probably write it off on his income tax as a business expense--”Lunch with Bill Laimbeer”--or as a charitable contribution to society.

Laimbeer also got off easy, with his $5,000 fine. He’ll get his money back from the tooth fairy.

Actually, Parish’s fine probably will be paid by the Boston fans. They chipped in to cover Kevin McHale’s fine after McHale dashed into the stands in Milwaukee to upbraid an uncouth fan for wearing a stripped shirt with plaid lederhosen .

Boston fans hate that kind of barbarism, and so do the Celtics.

Remember a few years ago when the Lakers were forgetting their manners on the court, provoking Celtic broadcaster Johnny Most to whine that Laker forward Kurt Rambis “crawled up out of a sewer”? Remember how McHale showed Rambis the error of his ways with a flying, midair necktie tackle?

That play has become a cherished bit of Celtic lore, symbolic of the team’s ongoing war against rampant rudeness in the NBA. The Lakers lost that series but learned an important lesson in civilized behavior.

Tuesday night, the Pistons also learned their lesson. Parish pounded some sense into them. With five seconds left, the Pistons politely declined to call a timeout and gather their wits. Then Laimbeer politely stepped back to let Celtic Larry Bird intercept a politely lobbed pass from Isiah Thomas. Bird threw the ball to teammate Dennis Johnson, who said “Excuse me” as he deposited the ball in the hoop.

Score another win for the proper Bostonians.

‘Twas ever thus, the Celtics enforcing cultural standards for the rest of the league. They once employed a power forward named Jungle Jim Loscutoff, who didn’t get his nickname because of a knack for cultivating lush Boston ferns. He was one of a long line of Celtic defenders of decorum.

On the current Celtic roster is another big man named Greg Kite, also not noted for his finesse. In fact, if Kite weren’t laboring under the banner of civilized play in the NBA, you might think him a goon.

A photo in a recent issue of Sports Illustrated shows Kite hammering an opponent in such a frightening manner you shudder to imagine what social faux pas the opponent was guilty of to merit such stern reprimand.

It’s an uphill battle for the Celtics. Pro basketball is a violent, startlingly impolite game. At this point in the playoffs, no shot is uncontested. The body contact on almost every play, although not glaringly evident on TV and from most seats in an arena, is dramatic when viewed from close range.

It’s a brutal game, impossible to control by the game officials, who are like two neighborhood beat cops trying to prevent a nuclear war. And they don’t get much help. For instance, immediately before tipoff at each Laker-SuperSonic game in Seattle, the arena PA system blared out the old Rolling Stones hit, “Street Fightin’ Man.”

In Boston, I believe, they open with Stravinsky.

The normal NBA body banging is scary, but the extracurricular stuff is even scarier. A few years ago, a Laker player named Kermit Washington threw one punch at an opponent named Rudy Tomjanovich and turned Rudy T’s face and skull into a 3-D jigsaw puzzle to be pieced together by teams of surgeons.

This, as K.C. Jones would say, isn’t what basketball is all about.

Sometimes it’s difficult to tell exactly what NBA basketball is all about. Sometimes you just have to watch the Celtics. In so many ways, they’ll show you.