As dismal as the Los Angeles Lakers’ current 2021-2022 campaign, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty is guaranteed to turn the stomachs of not only Boston Celtics fans, but anyone hoping for more than an egregiously cartoonish and ham-fisted hagiography executed with all the subtlety of a no-look pass to the nuts. Corny, superficial and severely full of itself, HBO’s ten-part series (March 6) wants to be both an unabashed celebration and a complicated study of flawed characters. However, in the hands of creators Max Borenstein and Jim Hecht, and executive producer and director Adam McKay (Don’t Look Up), it plays as a fictionalized fanboy take on a beloved franchise, marked by mounds of obvious exposition, unbearably cringe-worthy aesthetics, and a steady stream of literal winking at the camera that’s then embellished by cutesy “ding!” sound effects.
Based on Jeff Pearlman’s book Showtime, the show does almost nothing right in recounting the Lakers’ 1979-1980 season—and yes, the fact that it only gets through Earvin “Magic” Johnson’s (Quincy Isaiah) rookie year is one of its many issues (ESPN’s 10-episode Chicago Bulls docuseries The Last Dance is downright efficient by comparison). Chief among its shortcomings is its preternaturally ugly aesthetics. To achieve a period veneer, McKay and company douse everything in muddy colors and excessive film grain, and subsequently exacerbate that unpleasant look by frequently, and haphazardly, switching to grainier 16mm-esque film stock to suggest, well, who knows the purpose of such a meaningless gimmick. There’s occasional animation and cheeky on-screen text too, the latter appearing whenever McKay indulges in one of his typical jokey freeze frames. Throw in a collection of horrid wigs, goofy facial hair and garish outfits, and the result is arguably the least attractive show on television.
Unfortunately, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty’s clumsy style doesn’t end there. McKay, Borenstein and Hecht have their principals repeatedly break the fourth wall in order to narrate their own tale and knowingly smile and smirk at the camera, thereby adding an additional layer of hyper-aware artificiality. At the center of its story is Dr. Jerry Buss (John C. Reilly), a real-estate magnate who sets out to buy and revitalize the Lakers franchise by turning it into a reflection of himself: an accomplished but sleazy horndog whose favorite pastimes are touting his own greatness, sticking it to any and all adversaries, and sleeping with as many Playboy Playmates as the day will allow. Buss loves his mother Jessie (Sally Field), a domineering accountant, as well as his daughter Jeanie (Hadley Robinson), who’s getting in on the ground floor of the Lakers operation, and is destined to one day run it. As enthusiastically embodied by Reilly—the show’s sole standout—he’s a visionary who alone sees the mint to be made from transforming the Lakers into a glitzy, glamorous Showtime spectacular.
Buss’ partner in achieving that dream is Magic, the Michigan State phenom whose big smile and flashy play are central to the Lakers’ ‘80s DNA. As with Buss, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty fawns over Magic, portrayed by Isaiah as a gregarious showman who’s rightly convinced that he’s special. At the same time, though, the show also depicts both of its protagonists as cocky me-first lotharios who can’t keep it in their pants, regardless of the pain and misery it causes their loved ones—especially Magic’s oft-betrayed childhood paramour (and future wife) Cookie (Tamera Tomakili). Desperate to be more than just an effusive love letter, the series tries to have its cake and eat it too by lionizing Buss and Magic while simultaneously censuring them for their serial two-timing, not realizing that both tacks make them come across as unbearably smug creeps.
Parental issues are everywhere in Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, not only with Buss (whose cherished mom is a handful) and Magic (whose mother is a judgmental ball-breaker), but also with Pat Riley (Adrien Brody), here imagined as a stork-like doofus still smarting over his mean daddy and eager to get his foot in the door as a coach. He does, eventually, courtesy of Paul Westhead (Jason Segel), who becomes a Lakers assistant once the team hires strategic genius Jack McKinney (Tracy Letts) as its head coach and takes over that lead position once McKinney suffers a terrible bike accident. Brody is stuck playing an embarrassing clown; in that respect, he’s in fine company, since just about everyone else is as well, be it Rory Cochrane as UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian, Segel as namby-pamby Westhead, or Sean Patrick Small as Larry Bird and Michael Chiklis as Red Auerbach, all of them reduced to coarse Halloween-costumed caricatures—which is in keeping with drama that stages every dilemma and conflict for maximum one-dimensional campiness.
Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty posits Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Solomon Hughes) as a learned man whose antisocial sullenness is a byproduct of racial and religious discrimination (his conversion to Islam is presented, in flashback, as a response to a white cop killing a Black kid, for ideal timeliness). Yet that doesn’t prevent him from resonating as a cold jerk. The series’ greatest contempt, however, is reserved for Lakers legend Jerry West (Jason Clarke), who’s presented as a Looney Tunes-ish rageaholic so mad about his professional failures (most of them to the Celtics) that he never stops throwing insane man-child tantrums. This isn’t a fully formed characterization of an all-time great; it’s a malicious portrayal of a man who won titles for the team as both a player and, later, as a general manager, and it feels like a direct extension of the terrible treatment West has received from the team in recent years.
So awful is Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty that this is the conclusion of my review, and I’ve barely mentioned that its gameplay action is monotonous and phony (it’s all alley-oops and fancy passes), its inter-squad squabbling is pedestrian, and its season-long narrative is distended to such a laughable degree that, after eight episodes, it finishes without even getting to the 1980 NBA Playoffs! Borenstein, Hecht and McKay apparently believe that the behind-the-scenes minutia of the Lakers is infinitely fascinating, not to mention groundbreaking (no matter that the true revolutionary, Michael Jordan, was still on the horizon). Yet at least during its maiden season, their show exhibits nothing more than G League-grade skills.
