Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty season 1 review
Fair warning here, I’m a Los Angeles Lakers fan and was excited to hear the news that HBO was making a series about one of the most successful franchises in NBA history.
Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty has its share of problems and a clear disdain for facts, but there’s enough reasons to be optimistic that the series can be a contender.
Season 1 looks at the major turning point for the franchise. Jerry Buss (a sensational John C. Reilly) has just finalized a deal to purchase the Lakers largely on hopes and dreams, but he’s convinced he’s made a terrific investment.
Buss doesn’t know how fortuitous his purchase will be as the Lakers acquire the No. 1 draft pick allowing them to select the dynamic, charismatic Earvin “Magic” Johnson (Quincy Isaiah). Alongside fellow rookie Larry Bird (Sean Patrick Small), Magic will forever change the face of the NBA…eventually.
For now, Magic has to endear himself to his teammates, specifically Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Solomon Hughes), Norm Nixon (played by Nixon’s son DeVaughn), Michael Cooper (Delante Desouza) and Jamaal Wilkes (Jimel Atkins). Wood Harris joins the series later as Spencer Haywood, a brilliant yet troubled superstar battling a drug addiction. Harris is habitually underrated, but hopefully this performance will once and for all end any questions about his superior talent.
Leading this Lakers squad is head coach Jack McKinney (Tracy Letts, Little Women), a veteran assistant that’s longed for his shot at the main gig for years. Under McKinney’s unorthodox style, the Lakers begin to evolve into a dynamic force led by Magic and Kareem.
Not shockingly, Winning Time is at its best when it focuses on the Lakers. Isaiah is fantastic as Magic capturing his larger-than-life presence that even gets jaded veterans like Kareem to reconsider their love of the game. Hughes is equally impressive in conveying Kareem’s stoic elegance. And Letts is strong as the hard-nosed, old-school coach.
The basketball “action” scenes are done tighter and feel more small scale since staging an arena full of thousands would be tricky. Regardless, the actual basketball has a good flow and physicality.
Directors including Tanya Hamilton, Damian Marcano, executive producer Adam McKay and Salli Richardson-Whitfield bring a vibrant sense of style to the series with quick cuts, washed out sequences, playful pop-ups and numerous fourth-wall breaking moments.
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Winning Time’s biggest problem is showrunners Jim Hecht and Max Borenstein’s belief that imaginary drama is better than actual drama. The show is riddled with inaccuracies and outright lies to heighten the suspense and drama. In almost every instance, the “fact manipulation” is so lazily done that a 20-second Google search corrects the show’s spin on actual events.
What’s most frustrating about the fake storylines is the clear untapped subplots that would have been more compelling. The writers depict former Lakers legend Jerry West (Jason Clarke) as a Tasmanian Devil style psycho whenever forced to make a decision.
The series could have explored more of West’s unsatiated need to beat the Celtics when it mattered as a player. Or just how the lone championship he won among so many lost opportunities drove him to make the Lakers more successful from the front office.
Winning Time opts for a quick caricature of West. Occasionally, Clarke is able to deliver more than the one-note character beat the script calls for, but it’s a waste of great casting.
As poorly as West is treated, Paul Westhead is treated worse. Jason Segel is encouraged to play the coach as the Cowardly Lion afraid of his own shadow. This clearly seems to make Adrian Brody’s Pat Riley come off as more important and significant in his assistant coach role, but it makes Westhead look so badly it’s unbelievable that anyone would follow him.
In fairness, Brody absolutely nails his portrayal of Riley. There are some clever edits that show the young Riley looking in the mirror as he transitions to the older, slicked back grey-haired veteran coach.
Kareem also gets shortchanged. At that stage in his career, Kareem stated he was jaded and maybe a little bitter. The show briefly touches on Kareem’s dissatisfaction and doesn’t seem interested in all in exploring how such a pro-black man like The Captain would have a white girlfriend. That alone seems like an episode’s worth of content on Kareem.
The writers also find the Buss storyline equally as compelling and engaging as the Lakers players. That’s not the case. Reilly is game, but even a cash-strapped millionaire hardly makes for the most endearing and relatable character.
There are layers to Magic, Kareem, et. al becoming basketball royalty, but watching Buss cavort with Playboy models and basically forcing himself on other women isn’t nearly as fun-loving or charming.
The subplot with his mother’s (Sally Field) ailing health helps somewhat to make him “just a regular guy,” but Buss’ best moments come purely in the context of basketball operations.
His own budding rivalry with Celtics president Red Auerbach (Michael Chiklis), navigating the unexpected coaching crisis and finding a way to keep West engaged make for terrific moments.
Maybe the series’ biggest stretch with the truth is making Buss’ daughter, Jeanie (Hadley Robinson), a far more important figure in the formative years of the 80s Lakers dynasty.
Jeanie wasn’t conceiving the Lakers Girls as the show suggests. Instead, she was the general manager of the Los Angeles Strings, a tennis franchise Buss owned. In 1993 Jeanie became the owner of roller hockey team, Los Angeles Blades.
Winning Time attempts to draw this throughline from Jeanie spending more time with Jerry to her eventually succeeding her father as the team owner. That’s not even remotely true.
A Jeanie storyline showing how she made her own mark going up the ranks in other sports before taking over one of sports’ most famous franchises seems like a stronger storyline anyway.
Magic’s season arc is better though it’s not without stumbles. It’s with Magic’s sexual exploits that the directors and writers take advantage of the show being on HBO with random full body shots just because they can show a pair of boobs or six. Essentially, a key plot point for Magic is he screwed anything that batted an eye at him.
While clearly that would be fun for a young man coming to LA, it stops being titillating early on. The yo-yo back and forth nature of Magic’s relationship with his ex-girlfriend Cookie (Tamera Tomakili) is given too much time considering the on and off again nature of their relationship. Magic and Cookie didn’t get married until 1991 so making her such a pivotal character in season 1 seems silly.
What’s more fascinating is Magic getting acclimated to the business side of the NBA and being positioned as one of the faces of the league’s future. And how that collides with his upbringing from his deeply invested father, Earvin Sr. (Rob Morgan) and religious mother Christine (LisaGay Hamilton).
Shoe icon Phil Knight tried to recruit Magic to be the face of Nike years before Michael Jordan, but Johnson turned the offer down. This is an actual event that Winning Time delivers beautifully. These rare moments make it more puzzling why the writers opt to create a fictional universe using the Lakers characters so often.
Any time Magic’s rivalry with Bird plays out, Winning Time scores. Patrick Small makes Bird a cocky and emotionless “villain,” the perfect antithesis to Magic’s megawatt smile and easygoing demeanor. The Celtics-focused episode is easily the season’s best until the finale as the Lakers vie to win the championship.
HBO has already renewed Winning Time for a second season. That seemed inevitable if for nothing else than to fully dive into the Lakers/Celtics rivalry. If the writers dial down the overly sensational fiction and dabble more into actual events, this could be the start of championship worthy series.
Rating: 8 out of 10
Photo Credit: HBO
Check out the Magic Johnson: Always Showtime on DVD on Amazon.
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