Celtic-Buck Game Tonight Is Added to WTBS Schedule

Best move of the National Basketball Assn. playoffs so far was the one WTBS made Thursday, when the cable network added tonight’s Boston-Milwaukee game to its schedule.

Originally, WTBS was not planning to televise an NBA game tonight. But when the Bucks defeated the Celtics at Boston Wednesday night, the schedule change was made.

The basketball game will begin at 5:05 p.m. PDT, followed by delayed coverage of the Atlanta Braves’ game against the Pirates at Pittsburgh.

Attention, all you Tom Heinsohn fans. From now on, the former Celtic player and coach will be working every 1987 Laker playoff game that CBS televises.

Next Tuesday night’s Laker game, however, will not be on CBS. Instead, the game will be on Prime Ticket and, outside Los Angeles, on WTBS.

Next Thursday night’s Laker game will be televised by CBS and shown throughout the country at 11:30 p.m. Since that game will not be a deciding game, it probably will be delayed in Los Angeles as well.

Add NBA: CBS will cover the NBA draft lottery Sunday during halftime of the Eastern Conference playoff game--either Milwaukee vs. Boston in Game 7 or Detroit vs. Boston in Game 1, depending on the outcome of tonight’s game.

Game coverage Sunday will begin at 10 a.m. PDT.

Last add NBA: The average Nielsen rating for the eight playoff games on CBS so far is 5.6. After eight games last season, the average rating was 6.6.

Super tough: NBA athletes are often called the greatest in the world, but even more impressive are the athletes appearing on “Wide World of Sports” Saturday at noon.

If you think running up and down a basketball court is tiring, imagine running, virtually nonstop, for 100 miles through rough, up-and-down, mountainous terrain.

That’s what 415 men and women attempted to do last June 28 in the 12th Western States 100, a footrace from Squaw Valley to Auburn, Calif. The object is to finish within 24 hours.

ABC, for the second straight year, covered the race and, nearly 11 months later, highlights will be shown Saturday.

Producer Doug Wilson, director Larry Kamm and a crew of 60 worked non-stop for more than 30 hours chronicling the race.

The winner finished in 16 hours 37 minutes, but the ABC crew stuck around to catch a runner named Bill McKean finishing in 28:05.

McKean suffered massive and potentially crippling injuries in a cycling accident in 1984.

The cameras also focus on 42-year-old John Loeschhorn of Irvine, owner of a chain of Southern California athletic shoe stores. Loeschhorn, so confident before the race, his first Western States, nearly quits in the last four miles but manages to get up and finish fifth in 18:40.

“We ended up with 44 hours of footage that had to be edited down to 55 minutes,” producer Wilson said.

The result, though, is an excellent show.

Oops Dept.: Have you heard what happened to Channel 4’s Fred Roggin recently?

On the day that basketball’s Bill Russell was named coach of the Sacramento Kings, Roggin reported on the 11 o’clock news that Dodger coach Bill Russell had been named coach of the Los Angeles Kings.

It was supposed to be a joke, but a lot of viewers thought Roggin had made a colossal error.

Channel 4 news anchor Keith Morrison was supposed to say, “No, Fred, you’ve got the wrong Bill Russell.” But apparently Morrison missed his cue and the gag bombed.

“We got a lot of calls from people wondering if the report was for real,” Roggin said.

Channel switching? There has been talk that sportscaster Jim Hill of CBS-owned Channel 2 may switch to ABC-owned Channel 7 when his contract expires next month.

But one thing that CBS can offer that ABC can’t is NFL play-by-play assignments, which is very important to Hill.

Also, Hill’s Channel 2 salary alone is said to be $500,000 a year, a figure that ABC might be hard-pressed to meet.

Hill has been at Channel 2 since 1977. Station spokeswoman Andi Sporkin said every effort is being made to keep Hill.

TV-Radio Notes ABC-TV’s Preakness coverage Saturday will begin at 1:30 p.m. PDT. Post time is 2:33. The same announcing team that worked the Kentucky Derby two weeks ago will be at the Preakness. . . . Tonight’s International Boxing Federation cruiserweight title fight between Evander Holyfield and Rickey Parkey at Las Vegas will be televised live by Showtime. The TV card starts at 7 p.m. The show will be repeated Saturday at 3:30 p.m. . . . Saturday night’s Roberto Duran-Victor Claudio fight at Miami will be televised by FNN/SCORE live at 6 p.m. Duran, 35, is making a comeback as a middleweight and is hoping a victory will put him in line to face either Sugar Ray Leonard or Marvelous Marvin Hagler. Claudio, 12 years younger than Duran, is from Puerto Rico. He won a silver medal in the 1984 Olympics. On the undercard is a fight between heavyweights Jose Ribalta, the fifth-ranked World Boxing Council contender, and Matt Young.

FNN/SCORE will be televising United States Basketball League games, beginning tonight at 5 with the Rhode Island Gulls playing at Long Island. Among the players for the Long Island Knights are Nancy Lieberman, the only woman in the league, Micheal Ray Richardson and former Clipper Geoff Huston. Tyrone Bogues, a 5-3 guard from Wake Forest, plays for Rhode Island. . . . Attention soccer fans: Saturday’s FA Cup final between Tottenham and Coventry will be televised, delayed, at 3 p.m. by FNN/SCORE. . . . Saturday’s Pepsi Invitational track meet at UCLA will be televised, delayed, at 7:30 p.m. by Prime Ticket.

The first game of the Stanley Cup finals between Edmonton and Philadelphia, to be televised by ESPN, will be Sunday at 5 p.m. . . . Taped highlights of an interesting auto rally, the fourth Cannonball One-Lap of America, will be televised by NBC Sunday. Channel 4 will carry the 8,000-mile event at 1 p.m., and other West Coast NBC stations will carry it at noon. . . . Taped coverage of the Beverly Hills Cycling Invitational, held May 3 and jointly sponsored by Subaru and The Times, will be shown Saturday at 5 p.m. on Channel 7. GGP Sports is the producer of the telecast.

An International Boxing Federation heavyweight title fight between Tony Tucker and James (Buster) Douglas has been added to the HBO card featuring Mike Tyson and Pinklon Thomas May 30 at Las Vegas. . . . Life-isn’t-fair Dept.: Last Friday, nationally known radio talk-show host Pete Franklin, who has worked in Cleveland for 21 years, signed a contract to work for New York’s WFAN radio, which begins an all-sports format July 1. Franklin called it the “job of a lifetime.” On Tuesday, Franklin suffered a massive heart attack. His condition is listed as critical.

For the record: NBC was wrongly criticized in this space last week for missing Paul Azinger’s winning eagle putt at Las Vegas two weeks ago. Actually, the live shot showed the ball going into the hole. It was the first replay that showed only Azinger celebrating. . . . Don Drysdale’s scoreless streak of 58 innings in 1968 will be highlighted on “This Week in Baseball” on Channel 4 Saturday at 9:30 a.m. The show opens with footage of Robert Kennedy, on June 6, 1968, the day he was assassinated, congratulating Drysdale for his sixth straight shutout. . . . New York’s Stage Deli has named a sandwich after NBC’s Marv Albert. It’s made of corn beef and swiss cheese. Albert’s wife said: “It should have a little tongue and a whole lot of baloney.”