Though Chong was born in Canada, where hockey is king, "I've always been a basketball guy," he says. He and Marin were regulars at Lakers games, and Marin says they played a lot of basketball while touring.
As Chong remembers it, their tongue-in-cheek ode to the game had its genesis one night during a mad dash to a Lakers game at the Forum, Chong and Marin riding in a car with Nicholson. They were running late, Chong says, and Nicholson was behind the wheel of his Mercedes, driving erratically.
In the back seat, Chong says, Marin nervously mimicked the 12-year-old vocalist who sang "Love Jones," changing the lyric to, "I got a basketball Jones."
The next day, Chong and Marin wrote out the rest of the lyrics, according to Chong. Marin, however, said in a separate interview that he remembers most of the lyrics being ad-libbed in the studio.
Perhaps by happy coincidence -- though Marin notes, "Nothing is happenstance with Adler" -- a "super session" was being recorded in the studio next to where Cheech & Chong were recording. A demo was played for the more serious musicians and an all-star backing band for "Basketball Jones" was hastily recruited.
"Adler knew all the guys so he just went over and played them the track," Marin says. "Everyone cracked up and then they played on it."
The song's guitar intro was played by George Harrison, and among the many other well-known musicians credited were Carole King, Billy Preston, Tom Scott and Nicky Hopkins. The backup singers, billed as cheerleaders, were Darlene Love and, from The Mamas and The Papas, Michelle Phillips.
Still, the song was a surprise hit.
" 'Basketball Jones' became way more famous than 'Love Jones,' " Chong says, laughing. "In fact, the guys that did 'Love Jones' were a little mad because we took a serious love song and turned it into comedy."
Cheech & Chong continued their run of success through the 1970s, but they retired their act in the early '80s and went their separate ways, citing creative differences. Marin, 60, hit it big with another parody called "Born in East L.A.," based on Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA." He is an actor, a celebrated collector of Chicano art and an avid golfer. The 68-year-old Chong, jailed for nine months in 2003 and 2004 for selling a bong, is an actor and standup comedian in an act also featuring his wife, Shelby. He and his wife are trying to sell a reality show.
"Basketball Jones," meanwhile, was featured in a memorable scene in the 1979 Peter Sellers film, "Being There." And a remake by Chris Rock and Barry White was featured in the 1996 Michael Jordan movie, "Space Jam."
The original, though, deserves to cut down the nets.
"It's really iconic," Marin says. "It's one of those things that stuck in people's memories. It hit a cord, it hit a note, and people got it.
"It's a fun, very kind of intelligent take on stupidity."
jerome.crowe@latimes.com
