OS ANGELES - Put this game in a proper collegiate circumstance, with the packed gym and the bands and the cheerleaders and all the associated trappings, and people would have gone home saying, ''That's the greatest game I ever saw in my life.''

But it was just another day in the NBA, where this sort of stuff happens, without excess comment, about 200 times a year. Suffice it to say the Staples Center sellout crowd of 18,964 got a satisfactory afternoon's entertainment, even if most of them were not pleased with the result.

Celtics coach Jim