It looked like King Kong’s army versus mommy and the kids next door.

Basketball versus murder.

A game against death.

It shouldn’t make sense. But then again, why not?

The problem human beings have had with death, probably since the first bright ape stood up, flexed an opposable thumb and figured out that death was a Great Truth, has been how to deal with it.

Powdered ocher, hymns and chants, ranks of torch-bearing warriors, art, religion, massive pyramids of stone, slaughtered bulls, phalanxes of priests, poetry, statues, cathedrals, memorials, gravestones, crypts, hermetically sealed coffins, blazing pyres, urns of ash, perpetual trust funds, eternal flames and the wail of a solitary bagpiper, all have been used as a reply to death, as a comment or a comfort or a defiance.

Puny responses by comparison.

But what else is there?

So it was as sensible as these things get for Hal Arthur’s colleagues and students at Grant High School in Van Nuys to hold a basketball game in his memory.

Americans have developed a tradition of doing things they enjoy doing but ennobling the fun by frolicking in the name of a higher cause: jog against cancer, tennis for the homeless, roller skate against ignorance, drink champagne for the blind orphans.

The purpose of this game was to raise funds for a scholarship fund in Arthur’s memory, money that will go to Grant students who go on to college.

The idea is that a generation from now, there will still be students who know Arthur’s name and feel some gratitude to him.

That may or may not be of interest or concern to whoever it was who ambushed Arthur in the driveway of his home on Good Friday, pumping three bullets into him from a nearby car in the kind of cool, slick assassination that is thrilling in spy movies and nauseating in real life.

Arthur’s killing left a sizable mystery, plus a large number of former students who remember his history and government classes as a major event of their high school years.

Unfortunately for the scholarship fund, not many of them turned up for the game, even with the Los Angeles Raiders football team as a draw.

Only 200 tickets were sold at $5 each, raising $1,000. Only about 170 spectators turned up, including the high school band and cheerleaders.

The Raiders play charity basketball games in their off-season to keep their reflexes tuned and to generate halo-polishing PR.

For the scholarship fund, they faced off against the “Media All-Stars,” an anomalous label for as motley a crew of hoop hobos as could be found outside a midnight pickup game on a padlocked playground in Pacoima.

The core of the team was a group of sportswriters and sportscasters, who run surprisingly well for people who make their living sitting down, throwing stuff that is lighter than a basketball.

Backing them up were seven players from Grant High, plus Ann Meyers, who was an all-American on the UCLA women’s team in the late 1970s. She is married to former Dodgers star Don Drysdale.

Meyers brought her 21-month-old son, Don Drysdale Jr. He toddled about the sidelines in a T-shirt labeling him “Champ,” trying to dribble a basketball with about as much success as anyone his age.

The high school boys and Meyers made a strange combination against the massively muscled pro football players. It looked like King Kong’s army versus mommy and the kids next door.

Meyers was the player most likely to take charge on the court, snapping out orders and womanfully defending her space from the galloping behemoths.

She took command because “I played against these guys three years ago, and sometimes I can see what they’re up to,” she said. “Sometimes they play basketball the way they play football. They’ll just crowd you out of the way if you let them.”

The high school players had some advantages over the adults, both cumbersome pros and panting amateurs, she observed. “They’re faster, they jump better and they have younger bodies.”

So they did in the first half. It ended with the “All-Stars” holding a 55-44 lead.

On the other hand, Meyers observed, “The Raiders have the advantage of being professional athletes, which makes an enormous mental difference.”

The Raiders made her a prophet as soon as play resumed. They quickly pulled ahead.

The Grant students rooted one-sidedly for their classmates, but the Raiders had their own borrowed cheerleaders.

It’s not often that 17-year-olds get a chance to come out of retirement, but Grant has a two-squad cheerleader system. The Girls of Autumn, who ended their careers some months ago, were asked to come back as perhaps the youngest Raiderettes ever.

“We had no choice,” said Susanne Maltzman, 17, a senior.

“The new cheerleaders wanted the other team because our players are on that side. We were going to wear our Retired Cheerleader sweat shirts but decided not to. Everybody knows we’re retired.”

To distinguish themselves, the over-the-hill squad put Raider bumper stickers on their chests.

The veterans had more to cheer about as the game ended with the Raiders running away, 103 to 89 (or maybe 102 to 88, or something like that).

Jerry Robinson of the Raiders spent the last full minute of play running a victory lap around the court, a shirt wrapped around his head streaming behind him.

The teen-age spectators hurried out to get in some gossiping and necking in the parking lot.

Death had been answered, at least as effectively as by building a pyramid or slaughtering a bull.