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The NBA on NBC theme will remain dead thanks to new TV deal – Metro US

The NBA on NBC theme will remain dead thanks to new TV deal

At some point a sports God has to intervene, right?

I mean, we currently live in a world where there is no NFL team in the second largest market in America (Los Angeles), yet Jacksonville somehow trots out a team each week. We currently live in a world where Mike Francesa does five and a half hours of sports radio each day without Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo. We currently live in a world where Paul Pierce plays for the Wizards, Julius Peppers does Lambeau leaps and Wes Welker catches balls from Peyton Manning … in Colorado.

No doubt, the worst of all modern day sports crimes is that John Tesh’s masterpiece, the NBA on NBC theme song aka “Roundball Rock,” does not show up on NBA broadcasts anymore. In fact, it hasn’t in 12 years. And barring divine intervention, the theme of all themes won’t show up on an NBA telecast for at least another 11 years.

The NBA reached a new TV deal with ESPN and Turner Sports Sunday for a cool 2.66 billion PER YEAR and the league ultimately didn’t even talk to NBC. The Worldwide Leader and Turner got the deals done within their exclusive negotiating window with the league.

That’s a major bummer, not just for the millions and millions of Tom Hammond fans out there, but the billions and billions of diehard Roundball Rockers. Think I’m overrating Tesh’s phenomenon here? Hardly. When’s the last time a Saturday Night Live based an entire skit around a friggin’ sports theme?

Want more evidence of Roundball Rock dominance? The theme’s popularity was so strong back in the summer of 2008, that NBC ditched it’s Olympic ditty to bring back what everyone back home in the States had been daydreaming about since the 2002 NBA Finals.

Oh ya, and Nelly sampled it in his 2004 not-quite-a-hit song “Heart of a Champion.”

The only remaining hope is that the league will possibly allow Comcast, which broadcasts plenty of local NBA games, to use the theme instead of this boring deal:

Follow Metro Boston sports editor and columnist Matt Burke on Twitter: @BurkeMetroBOS