The Return of ‘Roundball Rock!’
• The soundtrack of the NBA a generation ago has thankfully made its way to the Tokyo Summer Olympics — “Roundball Rock,” the iconic score composed by our friend John Tesh about three decades ago — is being utilized once again by NBC at the Tokyo Games, as the theme music for men’s and women’s basketball.
As The Boston Globe gently reminds us, “Tesh’s music was the theme for the NBA on NBC coverage from 1990 through 2002, spanning parts of the careers of Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal and many others. The music started being used again on the Olympic basketball telecasts on NBC’s networks over the weekend.
Fun Fact: Tesh said that he came up with the theme on a trip to Europe but didn’t have a piano available to him. Necessity being the mother of invention, Tesh called his home answering machine and sang the idea for the theme into the phone, leaving the message to himself. More details about the genesis of “Roundball Rock” are available in this in-depth story in The Ringer.
The song was even parodied on NBC’s Saturday Night Live in a 2013 skit featuring, among others, Jason Sudeikis — who now stars in Apple TV’s beloved Ted Lasso.
