Growing up in the 1990s, watching the Bulls as the dominant pro basketball team was a big part of my childhood. Part of those memories include many of those games airing on NBC and the iconic NBA on NBC theme music, which is appropriately named “Roundball Rock.”
The story on how “Roundball Rock” came to be is an interesting story, as told by the song’s composer, John Tesh, in the embedded video below. Tesh is on stage and explains how the idea came to him many years earlier while in his hotel. Not wanting to forget the idea by the time he got home, he called his home phone and left a message for himself by humming his song idea to his answering machine.
By the early 2000s, the NBA left NBC, thus ending the use of “Roundball Rock,” marking the end of an era. With the Bulls becoming a league laughingstock by then, my interest in the NBA eventually died off.
That theme song, however, still ranks as one of my favorites and I was happy to come across this video.
