The Lakers' rise to dominance provides one of my favorite moments in TV sports storytelling
It’s been decades since I closely followed the NBA. I was addicted to watching Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls in the 1980s and 90s, and I was even pretty into the Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal Lakers that followed.
(One of the most-hated sports columns I ever wrote was about how I thought Kobe was making a mistake jumping from high school to the pros because of the many benefits he would get from a little college life. Of course, I was wrong based on how well he ended up doing in his career and, in hindsight, I should have known my audience better. They were mostly under-educated manufacturing and warehouse folks in central southern Illinois who perhaps rightly didn’t want to hear my logic.)
But even more than Jordan, I may look most fondly back at the NBA glory days of the late 1970s and 80s, when Magic Johnson and Larry Bird ruled the league. I still remember spending many hours cherishing my oversized 1976-77 Topps Kareem Abdul-Jabbar All-Star basketball card.
That Lakers-Boston Celtics rivalry was truly one for the ages, and Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty—a two-season series on Max from 2022 to 2023—captures the time and magic brilliantly. It’s helped by the mix of grainy 70s-style camera work mixed with high-resolution shooting. But the real star in the show that is not to be missed—even for non-basketball fans—is the amazing cast.
John C. Reilly has always been one of my favorite comedic actors, from the underrated and wildly silly Check It Out! with Dr. Steve Brule to Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, and Step Brothers. While this role has its comedic elements, Reilly shows dramatic range and is definitely the show’s most valuable player as Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss, a cantankerous man of his times who smoked and drank and made love fiendishly while also leading the team through a whopping 10 NBA championships.
Of the players, Quincy Isaiah as Magic and Solomon Hughes as Abdul-Jabbar are standouts. On the coaching front, Adrien Brody as Pat Riley and Jason Segel as Paul Westhead are mesmerizing.
How in the world have more fictionalized documentaries of great sports teams not been made? I would love a 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers one, although it might be tough to cast a pretty actor as grimacing, punching, teeth-missing Jack Lambert. Or how about a 1980s biopic on the St. Louis Cardinals? It could be a lot of fun to watch Nick Offerman as Keith Hernandez smoking cigarettes in the dugout while J.B. Smoove plays Willie McGee busy stealing bases left and right on the field.
The Last Dance, the Chicago Bulls series at the start of the covid pandemic, was almost as good as Winning Time, but using real actors rather than the documentary format arguably would have made it even better.
Season 1 of Winning Time is some of the finest TV there has ever been, focusing on Buss’s new ownership of the Lakers during the 1979-80 season. Season 2 covers the years 1980 to 1984 as Westhead’s brainy coaching “system” gives way to something a little more Magic friendly in Riley’s firebrand leadership style. If not for season 2 kind of petering out, this would be one of my favorite shows of all time. As is, it’s still about as good as it gets in terms of storytelling about sports.
4.5 out of 5 stars