Saturday Night Live took the audience back to NBC Sports Offices in 1990 to get an inside glimpse into how the NBA on NBC theme “Roundball Rock” came to be.
By SNL’s account, John Tesh and his brother “Dave” came by the offices to perform their new theme. And many probably didn’t know this, but the song originally had lyrics about basketball.
The lyrics went “Ba ba ba ba ba basketball gimme gimme gimme the ball because I’m gonna dunk it (high five)!” Understandably, the NBC Sports executives weren’t too keen on the out of key, repetitive lyrics. The Tesh brothers didn’t handle the news well that they’d prefer the song as an instrumental.
Check out SNL’s spoof of one of the greatest theme songs of all time in the video below.
