If the NCAA basketball tournament ever adopts a theme song, a 34-year-old hit by the comedy duo Cheech & Chong would be a worthy contender. "Basketball Jones" is a bracket-buster, to be sure -- not to mention a gut-buster -- and worthy of a No. 1 seeding.
Like March Madness itself, "Basketball Jones" is madcap fun, over the top and in your face. It's loud and boisterous, freewheeling and frivolous.
It speaks to obsession.
"I need someone to set a pick for me at the free-throw line of life," wails teenage hoop junkie Tyrone Shoelaces, voiced by Cheech Marin in an exaggerated falsetto, in one of the song's more memorable lines. "Someone I can pass to, someone to hit the open man on the give-and-go and not end up in the popcorn machine."
Later, Shoelaces urges Bill Russell and Chick Hearn to sing along, tells Chris Schenkel to keep quiet and boasts, "I could stuff it from center court with my toes; I could jump on top of the backboard, take off a quarter, leave 15 cents change; I could dribble behind my back; I got more moves than Ex-Lax."
Believed to be the highest-charting song of the rock 'n' roll era about a sport other than surfing, according to chart historian Joel Whitburn, "Basketball Jones" climbed to No. 15 on the Billboard pop singles chart in 1973, its popularity enhanced by an ahead-of-its-time animated promotional video.
A spoof of "Love Jones," a 1972 soul hit by a Chicago group of mostly high school students known as Brighter Side of Darkness, the Cheech & Chong parody was produced by basketball fan Lou Adler, who sits next to Jack Nicholson at Lakers games, and charted one rung higher than the song it mocked.
"It was just stupid enough," says Marin, who played basketball at Mission Hills Alemany High but never made it onto the varsity. "Everybody kind of knew the song 'Love Jones,' and that was stupid. It was like a very hip stupidity because it was a takeoff on a funny, dimwit song, and that made it smart."
Says Tommy Chong, the other half of a duo most famous for celebrating and lampooning the '70s drug culture, "It was just a good song that hit at the right time. It had nothing to do with dope and everything to do with basketball, and especially the obsessions of the players. Tyrone Shoelaces was a good example: a guy who loved the game so much that he slept with his basketball."
