When the Dallas Mavericks trot onto the court Wednesday night for their home opener against the Washington Wizards, The Who’s “Eminence Front” will blast across the American Airlines Center just as it has for nearly 20 years.

For fans, it’s the perfect intro song. Stark synthesizers create mystery, looping and building on top of each other until Pete Townshend slashes through the fog with a funky guitar riff and drummer Kenney Jones hammers it all home. For Mavs players, “Eminence Front” adds a quick blast of psychological momentum to help them start the game strong.

“That’s a wonderful use of the song,” Townshend told us in a recent interview. “I must have known [the team used it], because I must have given permission, but I had forgotten.”

Dallas Mavericks forward Dirk Nowitzki (41) enters the court before an NBA game between the Dallas Mavericks and the New Orleans Pelicans on Monday, March 18, 2019 at American Airlines Center in Dallas. (Ashley Landis / Staff Photographer)

The Who is performing “Eminence Front” on its current tour, which had been scheduled to come to the AAC last month, however, the show was postponed after singer Roger Daltrey came down with bronchitis. It will be rescheduled for April or May, according to Townshend.

Townshend admits sports were the last thing on his mind when he wrote the song for The Who’s 1982 album It’s Hard.

“I hope I’m not going to spoil everything now,” he says. “The music was the result of some of my synthesizer noodling, to which I added a driving blues guitar riff, then a lyric sneering at people taking cocaine and thinking they were more interesting or important. This was before I had myself tried the drug and thought precisely the same thing."

Roger Daltrey (L) and Pete Townshend of British rock band "The Who" perform at the Toyota Center on the second leg of their Moving On! tour on September 25, 2019 in Houston, Texas. (SUZANNE CORDEIRO / AFP/Getty Images)

Matt Fitzgerald, the Mavs’ former marketing chief, picked the tune shortly before the team moved to the American Airlines Center in 2001. He said he was looking for a song that begins without lyrics and builds to a crescendo, similar to the Chicago Bulls’ intro song “Eye in the Sky” by the Alan Parsons Project.

“We tried many different songs during our last season in Reunion Arena,” he says. “Then one day in my car, I was listening to a Who CD and ‘Eminence Front’ came on. We tried it, the Mavs fans responded in a very positive way, so it became our signature player introduction song.”

Mavs owner Mark Cuban says he was on board with “Eminence Front” right away.

“I loved it,” Cuban says. “It’s become iconic. It isn’t going anywhere.