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What: “NBA at 50 Golden Anniversary

Collector’s Edition” videocassette.

Price: $19.98 (CBS/Fox)

Now that this documentary of the NBA is available on videocassette, the league should require copies be placed in every locker stall in every arena across the land, with performance bonuses tied to a pass/fail pop quiz.

Back before the Why Can’t Johnny Stay in School at Least Until He Learns How to Shoot? years, the NBA really was like this: Beautiful cascading jump shots that rippled the inside of the net, connect-the-dot passing through the lane, a spontaneous, graceful game played to the rhythm of improvisational jazz by athletes who actually cared about the promotion of the sport and its legacy.

Listen to Bill Russell, the great Celtic center: “The time I spent in the locker room and on the floor with my teammates was a marvelous, marvelous, wonderful time for me. From there, I couldn’t go to heaven, because leaving there and going any place else was a step down.”

Or Magic Johnson, discussing the Laker-Celtic rivalry of the 1980s: “I wish all players had the opportunity to play in a championship and play with the Lakers or the Celtics during that time. Then they would understand what basketball really is.”

Or Johnny “Red” Kerr, on delaying the inevitable: “Later on in your years, you’d lay there on the training table and you’d rub your legs. ‘Come on, legs, come on! Just give me one more game, that’s all I want.’ ”

Ken Burns would do well to take notes too. Unlike Burns’ dreary, funereal examination of baseball, “NBA at 50” celebrates its sport, and there is much to celebrate: the barnstorming pioneers of the ‘40s and ‘50s who approached their task with a missionary’s zeal, Wilt vs. Russell, Magic vs. Bird, Dr. J in his aerodynamically incorrect mushroom Afro, Connie Hawkins and the playground gods of the 1970s.

Everyone interviewed seems to have truly loved pro basketball. Listen to the old San Antonio Spur, George “Iceman” Gervin:

“Best part of the game for me was playing in front of the fans. Because they knew that when they came to see ‘Ice,’ they were at least going to do this once--’Hoo! Hoo! Good shot!’ Hee hee hee. That was the life.”