Braves' New World

Buffalo Braves Coach Jack Ramsay is an incorrigible optimist. At the beginning of this season, following three years of famine for his expansion team, Ramsay had hopes for a veritable feast: nothing less than 42 victories, double last year's total. With Rookie Ernie DiGregorio the best-known player on the team, Ramsay's goal seemed laughable.

By last week no one in the National Basketball Association was laughing. The Braves won their 42nd game, and they had already locked up a spot in the playoffs.

The Braves are not the only N.B.A. surprise. With Wilt Chamberlain departed to coach in the A.B.A. and Jerry West sidelined by injuries most of the year, the Los Angeles Lakers went into the final days of the regular season dangerously close to missing the play-offs for the first time since 1958. The Detroit Pistons, meanwhile, were qualifying for postseason play for the first time since 1968.

Neither the Braves nor the Pistons would have made the play-offs without an assist from a newly amended rule book. Beginning this year, play-off berths no longer go to the first two teams in each of the four N.B.A. divisions. Instead, only divisional winners automatically qualify; a third-place team like the Pistons (behind Milwaukee and Chicago in the Midwest) can beat out a second-place team in the Pacific division if the third-place finisher has the better record. Buffalo, trailing Boston and New York in the Atlantic division, displaced second-ranking Atlanta in the Central division.

Italian Leprechaun. The Braves are the most improbable club in many years to make the playoffs. Their star center, Bob McAdoo, is a fingernail-biting acrophobiac who played with erratic brilliance in his first year but is leading the N.B.A. in scoring in his second. Guard Ernie DiGregorio, barely 6 ft., looks like an Italian leprechaun more suited to racking balls in a pool hall than leading the league in assists. Forward Jim McMillian, the guiding spirit of the team, is a thoughtful graduate from Columbia University, hardly a major source of basketball talent. Two other steady performers, Forward Garfield Heard and Guard Randy Smith, are virtual unknowns.

On the court, however, they can weld into a formidable force. With Ernie D. directing traffic and starting plays with pinpoint passes behind his back and through his legs, McMillian and McAdoo dropping in soft 15-ft. jump shots, Smith darting through the defense to score on lay-ups and Heard outmus-cling opponents to grab rebounds, the Braves are averaging 111.6 points a game--the best offensive record in the league. (Statistically, they rank near the bottom of the league, allowing 111 points.) Jack Marin, one of the best shooters in the game, can come off the bench to pour a dozen points through the hoop before the opposition realizes that he's on the court.

The Braves, of course, did not acquire all this talent by accident. General Manager Eddie Donovan is one of the shrewdest traders and drafters in pro basketball. Before corning to Buffalo. Donovan built the Knicks into a championship team by drafting the likes of Bill Bradley, Walt Frazier and Willis Reed, and trading for Dave De Busschere and Dick Barnett. In Buffalo. Donovan found in Owner Paul Snyder a man who was eager to underwrite similar maneuvering with a philosophy that "good players deserve high salaries."

The Basketball Robber. Donovan wasted little time putting Snyder's frozen-food fortune (Freezer Queen Foods Inc.) to work. During his first three years he drafted, and quickly signed to contracts each worth $2 million plus, Elmore Smith, McAdoo and DiGregorio. With McAdoo out of position his first year as a forward, Donovan traded Smith to the Lakers in exchange for McMillian. Subsequently, McAdoo blossomed into a topflight, mobile center. Heard, also picked up in a trade, gave the Braves the third member of a whippet-quick front line. Yet Donovan was still not satisfied. In January, "the basketball robber," as Donovan is called by envious competitors, traded for Marin and Matt Goukas.

Jack Ramsay turned Donovan's raw material into a contender. The offensive firepower of the Braves persuaded Ramsay to set aside any notions of turning his team into a top defensive club. "I've had to alter my theories on defense," he says. "To be defensive, you need a physically tough center and toughness at other positions. We can't be tough with DiGregorio at guard and McAdoo at center. Instead, we outrun and outshoot our opponents." When that is not working, Ramsay outyells them. He is the champion head rubber and tantrum thrower in the N.B.A., collecting. an average of one technical foul every other game.

In the first round of the playoffs, the Braves will face the best running team in basketball, the Boston Celtics. Until last month, Buffalo had lost 22 straight games to Boston. But that was before the pivotal trade for Marin and Goukas. Since then the Braves have defeated the Celtics two out of three times, taken two of three from New York, and stunned Milwaukee 145-109. "We can play anybody," boasts the bullish Ramsay, "and beat anybody." Besides, if the Braves fail this year, there is no telling whom Eddie Donovan will add to the lineup next fall.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.