Masterpiece: Cheech & Chong’s Greatest Hit

[Today: I've got a Basketball Jones...]

March Madness is here, and I’m like a kid at Christmas. I’ve managed to take off the first Thursday and Friday of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament for 14 of the last 15 years, and I don’t plan on missing it anytime soon. Over the last half dozen years, this event has grown into a two day party full of good friends, too much food, and the requisite beer and good cheer. And at the center of it all is college basketball played at its highest level, featuring one buzzer-beating Cinderella after another. For my money, these are the best two sports days of the entire year, bar none.

I’ve been a hoops fan my entire life. My mom told me a few years back that the sound of a basketball bouncing on concrete reminded her of me, because I spent so many summer nights dribbling home from neighborhood pickup games. I learned to love the game around the courts and practices of my youth, but I learned to really play it on the playgrounds of San Francisco during my 20′s. Now I’m confined to Saturday morning half-court games in the park, but I still enjoy setting a solid screen, boxing out for a rebound, and playing tough D. I also take pleasure in the kind of behind-the-back, no-look junk that would have driven my high school coach (Mr. Fryback) and grade school coach (Joe Evans) frothing-from-the-mouth mad.

Cheech & Chong are best known for their pot-smoke laced movies of the 1970′s (my personal favorite: Up In Smoke), but 98% of my love for them stems from their song ‘Basketball Jones’. If my entire youth were boiled down to a single tune, this would be it. Please play repeatedly at my funeral, and sing along with feeling:

Yes, I am the victim of a Basketball Jones
Ever since I was a little baby, I always be dribblin’
In fac’, I was de baddest dribbler in the whole neighborhood
Then one day, my mama bought me a basketball
And I loved that basketball
I took that basketball with me everywhere I went
That basketball was like a basketball to me

I even put that basketball underneath my pillow
Maybe that’s why I can’t sleep at night
I need help, ladies and gentlemens
I need someone to stand beside me
I need, I need someone to set a pick for me at the free-throw line of life
Someone I can pass to
Someone to hit the open man on the give-and-go
And not end up in the popcorn machine
So cheerleaders, help me out

Basketball Jones, I got a Basketball Jones
Got a Basketball Jones, oh baby, oo-oo-oo

Listen: Basketball Jones

Tags: basketball, Cheech & Chong, Cheech & Chong's Greatest Hit, Joe Evans, March Madness, Mr. Fryback, Springfield OR