April 4, 1983

The sensation stopped being scary a long time ago. When Clyde Drexler was a 6-foot-1-inch, 14-year-old who had not yet known the feeling of reaching the rim of a basketball hoop, as he molded his game in a playground behind Albert Thomas Junior High in the south side of Houston, he went into the air with two taller players in front of him. ''They both jumped,'' Drexler said, ''and it scared me.'' That happened right about the time Drexler first developed the ability to slam a basketball through the playground's twisted metal hoops. ''The goals were 11 feet,'' he said. ''I guess they didn't want anyone to break it. After I dunked on the 11-foot goals, I figured I could dunk on the 10-foot goals.''

Western European governments signaled to Washington this weekend their view that Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko's rejection of its interim proposal limiting medium-range missiles was not likely to be the Soviet leadership's last word. Senior officials of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization reached by telephone in Brussels said Saturday, after Mr. Gromyko's news conference, that his rejection of Mr. Reagan's new proposals for limiting medium-range missiles in Europe was disappointing but not surprising. ''As far as we know Soviet negotiating tactics,'' a senior alliance official said, ''it's typical for them to come down hard at the start. But this does not necessarily mean it's the end.''

At least 900 pounds of gold chains, valued at $6 million, were reported stolen from a Fifth Avenue wholesale jewelry company in what the police said yesterday was one of the largest thefts ever of jewelry in New York City. The theft occurred in the second-floor offices of Goldheart International Ltd., at 565 Fifth Avenue, between 6 P.M. on Friday and 7 P.M. on Saturday, the police said. They said the offices, which are near East 46th Street, were entered from an adjoining office through a hole made in the wall with a sledgehammer. The sledgehammer, the police said, may also have been used to break into the vault where the chains were kept.

The toll booth at the entrance to the state park at Utah Lake near Provo now stands 20 feet offshore, and wind-driven waves break over the tops of picnic tables. And on the south shore of the Great Salt Lake beaches and parking lots have gone under, and workers have piled sandbags around buildings to keep back the rising waters. The Great Salt Lake, fed by record rain and snow over 18 months, has crept to its highest level in more than half a century. Flooding in low-lying areas has already caused at least $15 million in property damage, and state officials fear that the worst is yet to come.

Sidney Lowe and Dereck Whittenburg, North Carolina State's superb guards, ''look like they should be playing in a bar league in New York,'' according to their coach, Jim Valvano. ''They look more like a pair of linebackers than the best guards in the land.'' But Valvano, who was born in New York City, and sounds like a coach from a bar league, said: ''I've got to convince people that Sidney's the best point guard in the country. Whit knows how to make impressions 'cause he's the shooter, and that gets attention. But the two of them are much better than anyone gives them credit for because of appearances. And they know each other's moves so well for so many years.''