NBA on ABC & ESPN Theme Song Review

If John Tesh’s techno-orchestral NBA on NBC theme, titled “Roundball Rock,” tells the musical story of SuperSonics Shawn Kemp snatching a defensive rebound away from the fingertips of a flatfooted, 7’6″ Shawn Bradley whilst simultaneously slinging his shoulders clockwise, surging upcourt, weaving through the Mavericks’ multicolored, Kidd-directed transition traffic, then taking off a sneaker-length inside the freethrow line for an off-foot, cockback tomahawk slam over slumping small forward, Jamal Mashburn, then the jerseyless team of Who He Work For? composers at Non-Stop Music—makers of ABC’s / ESPN’s “Fast Break” background track—resemble that kind of empty, easily forgotten pro possession where an unmolested Andre Miller might walk the ball over the timeline a step ahead of the 16 second mark, lighty lob it into Kemp’s outstretched left hand, watch a series of ineffective, shotclock-draining fake-spins & shoulder dips (after relocating to the floor’s weak side), then stare, blank-faced, as The Reign Man’s wrong-shoulder, turnaround post fade sails over the long side of the rim and rolls to a sticky stop, out of bounds, underneath the furthest-right of the three vacant, warmup-draped folding chairs that separate the Cavaliers’ black & blue bench from their red-faced, turncoat fans, whose collective boo and overheard profanations are abruptly lowered in the live-delayed mix, as Cleveland’s future-journeyman point guard and contract-fattened power forward waste no words—not even with their spit-spewing, side-parted, oil slick of a coach—while play temporarily pauses, and some tech-wizard’s overly ambitious screen-wipe transitions the bottom-third score bug into one of the second quarter’s two sponsor-called television timeouts.

The objectively awful, Disney-fied theme that Mr. Mouse and Herr Iger have been employing for the past 20 years in their NBA telecasts is an indisputable, abject failure in each basic concept of music:

Its rhythm is flatter than a Spalding that’s been sitting outside in sub-zero temperatures, its harmony is blander than a Subway BLT sandwich, its melody is hokier than an episode of 2 Broke Girls, and it plods along at a tempo fit for a half-asleep couch potato.

Whoever wrote those 60 seconds of aural hogwash should be banished from the music industry, then the squaretable of suits & ties who approved it should all be exiled from the entertainment industry.

This specific style of intentionally unexciting, emotionless-by-design, appeal-to-everybody-but-don’t-offend-anybody music has been plastered across the background spaces of every podcast, radio station, gas station, grocery store, department store, and Internet/TV channel ever since the U.S. cellphone networks upgraded to 4G and the American broadcast networks started shooting in HD, and as a lifelong music-lover, this 21st century’s digital equivalent to the 20th century’s brick & mortar elevator music makes me sicker than an uninsured chemotherapy patient.

In a capitalist-obsessed, influencer-worshiping society that only cares about its advertisers + shareholders, shows zero interest in & has no appreciation for fine art, and pays little socioeconomic respect to true-blue, non-commercially motivated artists, we—like the All-American legend, Robert James Ritchie, sang in his heartfelt power ballad, Only God Knows Why—get what we put in, and people get what they deserve.

Grade: F