Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty
 

Are you ****ing kidding me? This looks fantastic, and I'm not even a Lakers fan. But I absolutely remember that team and those times.

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McKay may be crazy as a shithouse rat IRL, but he's really good at capturing and portraying narrative and mood.

This gun B gud.

That looks like a straight up ripoff of Pearlman’s ‘Showtime’ book. Which was, BTW, amazing.

So yeah, I’ll be watching this. But if you’ve read showtime, I’m betting there’s nothing new to see here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baby Lee (Post 16000908) McKay may be crazy as a shithouse rat IRL, but he's really good at capturing and portraying narrative and mood.

Well yeah, he’s Dirty Mike.

It's so damn good and its one episode in.

My only problem is that Jerry West is wild mischaracterized. I get that it is fictionalized drama based off of a lot of truths, but you can't just take a character and turn him into a raging alcoholic madman when he wasn't even close to that during any period of this life.

Otherwise, very enjoyable first episode.

One episode in and this is pretty good. Only pet peeve is I absolutely hate when shows have characters talking to the camera/viewer. I just don't care for that style. Hopefully its something short lived early on to set the story in motion. Otherwise, it was an enjoyable episode.

Watched the first episode. It was decent enough to keep me watching.

Wonder if West is mad about his charactization?

Great stuff. John C Reilly is a perfect Dr. Buss

This is my favorite right now. Great show.

This is an excellent show.

Adam McCay's directorial style is right up my alley.

Also -- whoever is doing the casting for this show is DESTROYING it. They have to find ridiculously tall people who are excellent at acting while also casting extremely well known people like West, Auerbach, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and so on.

This show is pure joy. I love when I find television like this that just perfectly hits the spot and reminds me how lucky we are to exist in an era where content is so hypercompetitive.

(Last show that made me this happy was Queen's Gambit.)

LeBron ruined basketball

On the contrary, LeBron is basketball.

But I am enjoying this show so far and do agree they've done a good job with casting.

Watched one episode...nice to plaster the screen with "white" then "black"....when referring to the Bird/Johnson draft.

Another series ruined by woke equity commie propaganda...they just cant help themselves.

Riley was good...but not watching anymore of it...that and they totally rip off Scorsese...in a half-assed attempt.

I watch this shit to escape politics...not to be reminded of it every ****ing chance they can. I dont need my entertainment trying to manipulate me..

To be fair - it WAS how it was characterized in the 80s. Like, openly and obviously.

Bird was the midwestern hard working scrappy white guy. Magic was the flashy talented kid cruising on charisma and talent.

You don't have to 'go woke' to point that out - it wasn't even really disguised subtext at the time. It was just right out there in the open.

Even the stuff w/ Kareem this last week didn't exactly make him some sympathetic martyr nor did it really sugar coat the fact that a lot of his 'firmly held beliefs' made him something of a gigantic asshole.

There's been a lot of editorial license used here to punch the story up a bit (especially with Jeannie), but if you've read the Pearlman book - this is holding true to the underlying themes pretty well. The only place I'd say it strays a bit is that it's a LOT more Magic-centric than the book was and plays up Buss's playboy history a bit more. But that was more whitewashed by the book than anything - his antics were an open secret in LA. Dude was something of a miscreant to say the least.

That's how he ruined it.

the white black thing was a joke as it is on here. Sorenson is a real lunch pail type of guy

I didnt say it wasn't a topic back then...I was saying those in charge on the production decided to make it a political statement/focal point. They could have just as easily woven it into the context without 50 graphics of "white" then 50 of "black". It was a "cringe" moment...like "yeah, no thanks".

This is what propaganda looks like...if you want to marginalize it...go ahead. I know what the real intention behind it is...

I'll simply choose to not watch anymore of it or anything else that tries to push this agenda down my throat...this "woke" BS is a toxic, societal cancer.

Kinda sad since the Magic-Bird rivalry since college and into the NBA is what basically saved the NBA from being regulated into a niche league.

Bizarre that anybody is even criticizing that sequence. That's literally how it was in reality and the graphics were meant to be irreverent/humorous (as a lot of it is). This show may not be for you guys, I think.

Yeah - gonna say that anyone who's wound up about that isn't exactly the target audience.

'Propaganda' would've been to treat it exactly as Black Op is suggesting and pretend like it wasn't the driving narrative at the time.

But that's fine - he's knows what he knows and the rest of us Sheeple can just lap up the boob bait, I guess...

Interesting that you mention "target audience"...then immediately follow with the word propaganda.

Nevermind...enjoy your regularly scheduled programming.

Do you believe Downtown Abby and Wrestlemania cater to the same demographic?

You cannot be this dense.

Phenomenal series, and that’s coming from somebody that despises the franchise.

The only thing that made me cringe with this show was the “2nd worst Donald from the 80s” text when they introduced Sterling.

Completely unnecessary, and blatant political statement that had nothing to do with the show.

I forgot about that one...yeah...no propaganda woven in it.

6th episode was a lot of table-setting. Probably the "least best" episode of the series so far.

This could legitimately be a multi-season series. I have no idea how they're going to capture this decade in 10 episodes, and they've only got 4 left.

Right? It feels like it almost has to be. I haven't watched episode 6 yet but through 5 I mean we're just seeing McKinney get hurt.

We're halfway through the series and haven't even gotten to Westhead yet, let alone Riley. They could have a whole episode about AC Green, another one about the Norm Nixon/Byron Scott deal. James Worthy hasn't even made an appearance yet. Big Game James has to be a central character, right?

The decline years are fascinating in their own right with the loss to the freakin' Pistons and then that final Riley year completely imploding even as they actually put together a good year (I think that was the year that Riley really started to buy his bullshit and got Worthy hurt during wind-sprints or something going into the playoffs - the whole team HATED him by then).

I'm guessing they'll just ignore that season with Dunleavy when they lost to the Bulls, but if you're gonna have Magic tapping out and finish with changing of the guard sort of thing (not to mention get Michael in the show), you'd have to include that year. And we'd get some time with Vlade!

Yeah, I haven't been able to figure out how they're gonna do this in 10 episodes since the 3rd episode ended and they still hadn't really gone anywhere. The 80s Lakers have SO much ground to cover.

I feel like they did a pretty decent job of getting West's character back on the rails.

Now he's settled into that sort of tortured and reluctant genius role that I think captures his time w/ the Lakers pretty well.

Yeah, this should cut into 3 seasons.

Season 1 - Buss purchase through to the first championship and eventually Westhead being fired early in the season and replaced by Riley.

Season 2 - 82 through 86. The playoff loss to the Rockets after consecutive championships over the Celtics would be a good come-down and place to end that season. I think this would really be the apex of the series w/ Worthy and Byron being added to the mix. You've got Magic at his apex, Kareem slowing FAST and Riley slowly starting to go completely Hollywood.

Season 3 - Another title over Boston and then the slow decline of...pretty much everyone. It wouldn't be all downers because there were some great moments in there. But you can't have this series without the coda, can you? If you're gonna make it Magic-Centric, you need to put a bow on it.

Then again, did anyone else notice that Spencer Haywood just kinda showed up as though he materialized from thin air? I mean, nevermind that the Lakers traded probably their best player at the time and a guy who would've thrived in that wide open system in Adrian Dantley to get him. Hell, Dantley made the HoF. I don't think they ever mentioned Dantley even once. And I'm pretty sure he was on the team through camp.

They're missing some pretty big stuff in here so I guess they may just skip a bunch.

FYI a 2nd season has already been announced.

Ah.

Well that makes a lot more sense then.

Glad to hear they aren't going to try to hammer 8 years into 4 episodes.

I think you got to get the Magic getting da Aids. That's Hollywood crack.

First scene of the show was that so I assume it is going to end with that? But maybe at the end of multiple seasons rather than just one at the rate they are going right now?

DJ's left nut is a quality poster.

Interesting thing about the show as well - they don't show Magic ****ing at all. They show him eating pussy all the time.

he was ****ing a girl from behind right before the pussy eating scene

Just another Hollywood conspiracy to encourage manly men to eat pussy.

/BlackOps

Rumor has it that he ate Jeanie Buss’s ass.

I'd eat it just for the CHANCE of muscular dystrophy

I think I'll binge watch this once season 1 ends.

Looks pretty good

That episode was balls to the walls incredible.

**** Boston.

Who the hell do they have cast as Larry Bird? He's ****ing perfect.

I grew up a Celtics fan, raised on the legends of Bird, watching him play myself. Watching the actor say "I'm going to step this way and sink it from 12, no rim" only to jog back on defense saying "**** I think that was 13" was a dream come true. Perfectly captured.

“Mother****ers, ya’ll can’t stop me so I’ll tell you what I’m about to do, fake left, drive right, jumper from 12,, no rim.”

They Hollywooded that episode up. I had to look up at that road trip, not quite what really happened lol. Ironically the Christmas game they were in Kansas City.

Yeah I did too. Was a 5 game road trip around New Year's that culminated in this win on the road at Boston:

https://www.basketball-reference.com...001130BOS.html

It would appear that Magic did virtually nothing that game and that Kareem completely dominated (as he often did in those days). Lakers also really were not struggling at the time either.

Actually, they didn't play on Christmas.
And the road trip referenced took place in early to mid-January.
On the show, they played Indiana and lost, played Detroit and lost, and played Boston and won.

In reality, they WON all three of those games. And the Boston game on the show was hyped as the big re-match with Bird. In reality, they had played each other in LA two weeks earlier. And the team was 15 games over .500, as strong as they had been all year when the trip started, despite the show acting like the team was going downhill.

There's so much made-up bullshit on the show. It's basically a fictional story using real people as characters.

The movie Moneyball (which was quite good) was little different in that respect. I get being upset with that if you were the actual people involved, but for me, who is just there to be entertained, I don't care at all.

For some people, part of the entertainment is maybe learning something about the people and events that you are familiar with, but didn't already know. Here, they are just making up a lot of stuff. Some people who aren't as familiar with the people and events won't know the difference. And "It's not a documentary" shouldn't be license for just making shit up about people/events.

THIS!
It’s just fun. Not a retelling of the history facts.

We know that Kareem was a machine those years. We also know that Bird was a hungry mother****er who took no shit, talked it constantly, and pulled stunts like telling opponents what he was going to do. We also know Magic is/was a heart-first, head-second guy who eventually became a dominant offensive force. And we know the Garden was a sweat stain of a stadium packed with pasty Irish cab drivers who would go out of their way to piss off the Lakers. We know the Lakers were a showy group who got hammered by the Celtics and had to frequently rise to the occasion by playing left handed and hammering back, usually harder than the Celtics hammered them at the start.

That episode was not remotely a straight forward retelling, but it captured the essence and dramatized the rivalry beautifully. This is the Hollywood-ing this rivalry deserved.

"**** Boston."

I didn't know the exact specifics of that roadtrip.

Didn't care about the exact specifics of that roadtrip.

But if there were a week in Laker history where the mantra was "**** Boston," I'm totally onboard with the re-telling in this week's episode.

Close enough to real life that I'm not gonna deduct points from an admitted dramatization of a regular season matchup.

How many years does the book that this season is based on cover?

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/...series-winning

Yeah, I was expecting something like this at some point. Good luck getting a retraction, Jerry. LMAO

What's the truth? Did he have an over the top alcohol problem in that era? Rage all the time in private?

Also did Buss's daughters really discover Paula Abdul on a high school foot ball cheer team?

No on both.
The show is "supposed" to be based on the book Showtime written about 10 years ago. But the show is really just loosely based on the book. It veers away from it over and over in order to "dramatize" which apparently is license to just make stuff up.

They even make up stiff that is just completely unnecessary needlessly misleading. It is true that Tark's "agent" was murdered and found in a trunk. It is also known that he was stealing from the mob. On the show, he's found in the trunk with Buss's business card tucked in his collar. That never happened. Why make that up?

Because it's a TV show that is designed to entertain. Which, by the way, it is doing a pretty good job of.

Nice to see that you are as simple on these things as your posts on other things.

Never heard of creative license?

Is it entertaining to make an all time NBA a raging alcoholic for entertainment? It's just over the top. Its the lakers in the 90's. Plenty of over the top stuff you could show. They just show you a 30 second spot of the cocaine filled parties taking place in the Forum. Thats a gold mine. Not mined yet.

And the open shirt. Sure that was a thing in the 70's. Its 10+ years later. Did Buss really dress like that?

If you want to know who the show is going to shit on, take a look at who isn't in the good graces of Jeanie Buss. It portrays her as a precocious business genius who is also the one pure soul in LA. The Lakers took a high profile shit on Jerry West, so it isn't surprising that he's depicted in an unflattering light. With that said, the way Jason Clarke plays him is also hilarious.

I can see Jerry West being a dick. He was the face of the Lakers and then Magic Johnson comes in and steals his thunder. Jealousy. Its a story as old as time really.

Yeah, I have a hard time believing that some of this isn't the recent history of West as a very staid, behind the scenes personality being imparted onto his earlier years.

Because West was absolutely something of a fireplug as a player and I don't see that just shutting off as he became the coach and eventual driving force of the 80s Lakers.

Do I think he was some drunk rageaholic? No. But I think the show got away from that fairly quickly. I feel like at this point he's one of the more likeable characters in the show.

It's the 80s lakers.

And yeah, Buss absolutely dressed like that. I remember him dressing like that into the late 90s. But here's a picture of him holding the trophy they haven't even won yet on the show....

https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/uj...4_73733787.jpg

And yeah, he was a poon hound. I think the characterizations of Buss are extremely fair and Reilly has done an exceptional job portraying him.

John C. Reilly did a lot of serious roles before he was typecast in comedy, so I'm not surprised in the slightest that he was able to pull this off. He can do it all.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Jerry West&#39;s not done with HBO&#39;s <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WinningTime?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WinningTime</a>.<br><br>“The series made [the Lakers] look like cartoon characters,” West told former <a href="https://twitter.com/latimessports?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@latimessports</a> editor Bill Dwyre. “They belittled something good. If I have to I will take this all the way to the Supreme Court.”<a href="https://t.co/r4cuxurzIX">https://t.co/r4cuxurzIX</a></p>&mdash; L.A. Times Sports (@latimessports) <a href="https://twitter.com/latimessports/status/1518963997931843584?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 26, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

That sounds like something the TV version of Jerry West would say.

In any case, I very much agree at this point that he's one of the most likable characters on the show.

I completely agree -- he's maybe the most likeable character.

But I also understand why he'd be upset at scenes of him rawdogging a woman, and being perpetually foul mouthed and miserable, and slamming his MVP trophy against anything nearby.

It's just a show, folks. He is only the canvas on which Adam McKay drew.

Mark Zuckerberg is a horrible human being, but he realized that The Social Network was a dramatic story that happened to be about him, not a direct documentary on Facebook.

And again, think of how he handled some of his later years in LA behind the scenes and how frustrated/flat out angry he got at being someone marginalized.

I don't doubt for a single second that the miserable, hyper-competitive elements of the character we're seeing are pretty accurate. Again, West was NOT a wilting flower. And he was always known as one of the league's great competitors.

Why would that not carry over into his front-office years?

I've watched this whole series so far. The only really likable characters are the guy who plays Michael Cooper, the guy who plays Pat Reilly and the guy who plays Buss' business partner. Everybody else has been a douche. Magic will screw anything that moves. Cookie hangs with him even though he boinked her best friend. Buss is a total degenerate. He motor boated the hospice nurse (who is some Mexican model, btw). Sally Field is a drunk. His daughter is psycho. Kareem is a dick to all the other players on the team. Jerry West is a raging alcoholic. Chick Hearn calls Reilly's color analyst voice "bundle of sticksgy." Westhead is a pants wetting coward. The coach who fell off his bike is a mean spirited ego maniac. Bird is a surly douche. Doctor J plays Magic like a fiddle, just like Norm Nixon did in training camp. Even Buss' secretary will do whatever to stay employed. Paula Abdul is a pole dancer. John C. Reilly as Buss is pretty entertaining. He plays sleazeball to a T.

Bird was a surly douche who talked copious amounts of trash on the court. If they get that far I wonder how they will handle A.C. Green.

Is Magic going to sleep with a barnyard animal?

Best
Series
Ever

Rumors on S2 being renewed….either a continuation of 1980s (yay!) or the Shaq Kobe run. Shaq says he’s in. But guess who won’t be? ME.

why jump over the Bird/Magic championship games in the mid 80’s?

From everything I’ve read they aren’t skipping over the Magic era at all in S2.

S2 should really cover the next 2 years.


80-81 can show the cracks developing and Westhead trying to put his stamp on the team and prove that he’s a real NBA coach and not just someone coasting on McKinney (which, coincidentally, is mostly what Riley went on to do offensively).

81-82 can have Magic cutting Westhead off at the knees, McAdoo showing up and Riley making the Lakers ‘his’ team.

Seems like ‘80 through ‘82 is a perfect little timespan.

Kansas City Kings might get some showtime next season. That is the game Magic blew out his knee in 1980.

Too limiting. Plus, after they won 80, the Westhead story was mostly written. Him being fired in 82 was a bit boring because he never did anything after that. He had a fun run at LMU and a flameout in Denver but he’s not a story.

Riley? Huge story. But it’s not good enough to just show 82 and stop. The 83 sweep by Philly was compelling and then how they bounced back to dominate the next 5 years.

Btw I researched how Riley changed his hair. It’s a great (possibly apocryphal) story. Here’s what he looked like as an assistant in 1980 ( left below) before he went all Gordon Gekko***

https://media.gettyimages.com/photos...3647?s=612x612



*** Michael Douglas said for Wall Street, he took Gekko’s hairstyle from Riley. Modeled after him. True story

I could see taking it through '83.

But really I kinda liked the idea of S3 being '83 and the loss to the Celtics in '84 (that 7 gamer could be a season of its own with the way that series pivoted on a couple key foulups and a big scrum and eventual physical play) with the domination of '85-88 teams being S4 and then S5 being the decline and denouement.

But yeah, you could have S2 be through the Philly title, S3 the 'celtics years', S4 the Pistons years and S5 the runout against the Bulls and eventual Magic/Dunleavy wrapup.

They sorta foreshadowed it by beginning the series with Magic’s HIV diagnosis in 91

Btw Pearlman’s book did cover 1979-2001. So Shaq has a case of being in this but he needs to wait until S3 so I can avoid it

If it covered 2001, it spent maybe 5 pages at the end on it.

I don't recall a minute of it. You may be thinking of his 2nd Lakers book; Three Ring Circus. I enjoyed that one but it's nowhere near as memorable as Showtime. Honestly it's not his fault - it was just a more mean-spirited era in Lakers history and it made for a less light-hearted and enjoyable read.

I'm almost positive Showtime stops almost immediately after the loss to the Bulls under Dunleavy and then Magic's HIV announcement.