The broadcast is a relic. ABC introduced the game with a groovy theme song (?You?ve got to take time out/Get into the action?). The announcers, Keith Jackson and Bill Russell, wore canary yellow blazers. ABC used perhaps four or five cameras but none under the baskets. Commercial breaks lasted 60 seconds. If you wanted to know the score or the time remaining, you had to wait for Jackson to tell you.
Bill Cosby, sporting a thick mustache, pitched White Owl cigars. Bart Starr gave hosannas to the Yellow Pages.
If Jack Nicholson was seated courtside, ABC did not show him. The sideline star of the night was Walter Kennedy, the N.B.A. commissioner. Unlike Nicholson, he did not wear sunglasses.
There were no chest bumps during player introductions, no talcum powder tossed in the air.
At halftime, incredibly, Geoff Petrie and Barry Clemens played in the finals of the N.B.A. one-on-one championship, a taped feature called by Marv Albert.
On a few occasions on the tape, snippets of children?s shows re-emerge, evidence that whoever taped the game had recorded what might be ?Sesame Street? and a cartoon.