Pro Basketball: How to Make Contact

Basketball, as everybody knows, is a noncontact sport. At least that's what Dr. James Naismith had in mind when he invented the game in 1891. An "enjoyable form of recreation for mature individuals," he called it, and to keep it cool he specified that "no shouldering, holding, pushing, tripping, or striking, in any way, the person of an opponent shall be allowed." But Naismith figured without the pros—and particularly without the Boston Celtics, who won the National Basketball Association championship last week by trouncing the San Francisco Warriors in the roughest five games of basketball that memory...