The Voice of NBA Jam Reveals The Origins of The Video Game’s Iconic “Boomshakalaka!”Catchphrase

By Josh Sorokach Twitter @joshsorokach
Published June 21, 2024, 5:00 p.m. ET

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Attention ’90s kids: A 44-minute “NBA Jam” documentary is now streaming on Vice TV! This is not a drill.

The network recently launched a new docuseries, Uninterrupted: The Real Story of Basketball, that centers on legendary players and iconic roundball moments that forever changed the sport. Executive produced by LeBron James and Maverick Carter, the first installment focused on the memorable Shawn Kemp/Gary Payton Seattle SuperSonics squad, with additional episodes covering Pistol Pete Maravich, The Globetrotters, Bill Laimbeer, and more.

Are Pistol Pete and Bill Laimbeer NBA legends? Absolutely. No question about it. Can they shoot literal fireballs after making three consecutive buckets? Hell no.

It’s difficult to convey just how popular “NBA Jam” was in the ’90s video game scene. Released in April 1993, the now legendary over-the-top two-on-two basketball game featuring actual NBA players made a billion dollars in its first year, besting fellow video game icon “Mortal Kombat” by 153%. To put that in perspective, the number one movie of the year, Jurassic Park, made about $340 million at the box office.

But to be fair to Jurassic Park, raptors didn’t perfect the art of the slam dunk till around 1998.

“NBA Jam’s” popularity transcended basketball to become a permanent fixture in the cultural zeitgeist, with the game’s enduring legacy highlighted by one word: Boomshakalaka. Where exactly did this linguistical masterpiece come from?

The voice of “NBA Jam,” Tim Kitzrow, who incidentally was only paid $900 for his indelible mark in video game history, had a number of adlibbed quips, but Boomshakalaka wasn’t one of them. That honor would go to a member of the “NBA Jam” design team named John Carlton.

“I had just listened to the song ‘I Want To Take You Higher,'” Carlton explains on Uninterrupted. “The sequence when they say ‘Boom laka-laka;’ I just misquoted it and said Boomshakalaka.”

Nobody knew that the now ubiquitous word would eventually become an enduring pop culture staple, and it was all because of a misquoted lyric from a Sly and the Family Stone song.

“Crazy how that came together, man,” Kitzrow said. “Gift from the gaming gods that day.”

Episode 3 of Uninterrupted: The Real Story of Basketball (“NBA Jam”) is now streaming on the Vice TV website.