Summary
They weren't dead yet.
In Bill Russell's second season as player-coach, the Boston Celtics won their 10th NBA championship, despite finishing behind the Philadelphia 76ers in the Eastern Division for the second straight year.
The league expanded by adding the Seattle Supersonics and San Diego Rockets to its Western Division, moving the Detroit Pistons into the Eastern Division. It also faced a challenge from a rival league, the American Basketball Association.
The playoff structure changed a bit. First-round series went from best-of-five to best-of-seven, meaning that a team would have to win 12 games out of a possible 21 to take the championship.
In the East, the Celtics and 76ers both won in six games in the first round. Philadelphia then took a 3-1 lead in the division finals and seemed ready to get into the championship series again. But the Celtics came back to win three in a row, climaxing their run with a 100-96 win in Philadelphia.
In the West, third-place San Francisco upset the first-place St. Louis Hawks in the first round, but were easily eliminated by the Lakers in a four-game sweep.
That made the finals a matchup between the two second-place teams. With the series tied at two games apiece, the Celtics won the fifth game 120-117 in overtime at Los Angeles and then closed out the Lakers in six games.
Wilt Chamberlain finished third in scoring, but led in field goal percentage and rebounds again. Remarkably, he was also the league leader in assists, becoming the only center ever to lead in that category, and he won the MVP award for the third year in a row.
Dave Bing of Detroit, who had been Rookie of the Year the previous season, was the first guard to win the scoring title since Max Zaslofsky in 1947-48.
