"Yes!!!"

I feel bad for kids growing up today and watching the NBA. No, not because they didn’t get to see Michael Jordan play in his prime and no, not because the NBA is the most boringly predictable league in all of professional sports. You might think baseball is boringly predictable with the dominance of the Yankees, but since 1980, 18 different teams have won the World Series. In the same period in the NBA, 8 different teams have won a title.
This isn’t why I feel bad for kids, however. I feel bad for them because they don’t get to hear the greatest song ever composed by man play during telecasts.
That’s right – John Tesh’s “NBA on NBC” theme song is the single greatest musical composition that man has ever created. Nothing the Beatles, Elvis, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan or Marvin Gaye ever recorded can come close to touching this song.
So why does John Tesh beat out all of these formidable musicians? Well, that’s easy.
The “NBA on NBC” theme was easily the greatest “get-pumped-up” song ever written. I have never heard anything more effective at any level. Yes, not even Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.” This song could get you excited for some total crap matchup. Pat Riley’s mugging, dirty Knicks against the methodically boring Utah Jazz? Ugh! Then the theme song comes on…and suddenly you’re legitimately excited by the thought of an 82-75 final score. Seriously, this song even got me excited for Game 5 of the 1997 Lakers-Jazz series where 18-year-old Kobe Bryant got his first taste of failure as he hoisted airball after airball in a losing cause (as oddly metaphorical for Bryant’s personality and career trajectory as the entire “Pinkerton” album was for Rivers Cuomo. Downright eerie).
Hearing this song conjures up countless images for me. Jordan’s “final” shot against the Jazz, Reggie Miller’s playoff heroics, the Portland Trailblazer collapse in the 2000 Western Conference Finals, the Suns-Bulls Finals…it never ends.
Of course, with the coming of digital music players, its now possible to listen to this song at any time of the day, anywhere you go. This opens up a whole new can of worms.
Lately, I’ve been walking to campus and class listening to the “NBA on NBC” theme. And let me tell you, it’s like downing twelve Red Bulls in 5 minutes and snorting a bunch of No-Doz for good measure (or, if you prefer, like having 5 consecutive Jager Bombs and playing Broom Ball. Not that I’d know anything about that). You are WIRED.
I walk through crowds on Bruin Walk as this music plays, getting all manner of ridiculous thoughts in my head. As I come up on a slow-walking group of girls, I imagine that they’re a bunch of Pistons defenders and that I must drain fadeaway jumpers over them. I get the uncontrollable desire to set moving screens, particularly on guys who fly down the hill on skateboards. If I’m late for a class, suddenly I have a sense of urgency, as I must drive the lane in crunch-time and hope for a three point play (With Marv Albert saying in my ear,“To the basket…..YES!!!!!”).
I even had a ritual during this year’s NBA Finals where I would mute the volume on my TV and blast this song through our crappy speakers. It really made the games (which I was pretty excited for anyway) that much better.
Why can’t ABC bring this song back? Hell, buy the rights from John Tesh, or NBC, or whoever the hell owns it. Look at it this way – last year, Al Michaels got traded from ABC to NBC for Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a Disney character from way back when that NBC Universal still owned the rights to. If the man who asked whether we believe in miracles can be traded for some shitty cartoon, why the hell can’t ABC get the rights to the song I want played at my wedding, my children’s weddings AND my funeral?