Early in the first episode of HBO’s “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” soon-to-be team owner Jerry Buss, played in all his tacky-huckster glory by John C. Reilly, is reclining on a water bed at the Playboy mansion. A female companion is curled up asleep in the crook of his arm and he stares at the TV in front of him, transfixed, as he watches basketball: “Goddamn basketball,” he says, almost breathless. “I mean, look at it, it’s like great sex. It’s always moving. It’s rhythmic. It’s up close and personal with no pads or helmets for protection. It’s just you and these other guys out there, trying to get the ball into the hoop. It’s a beautiful thing. And every single one of those guys plays that game with their own unique pizazz and style. It’s sexy! Come on! I mean, if there’s two things in this world that make me believe in God, it’s sex and basketball, ya know?” He turns to the woman next to him. “Hon?”
She groggily rolls over, breasts exposed, and, blamo, we’re pulled back to a time (1979 to be precise) when gratuitous female nudity was a Hollywood staple. The show makes an unconvincing visual argument for its return; there are naked breasts aplenty throughout this limited series, which rarely knows what to do with its handful of underwritten female characters who get to remain clothed, including Buss’ mother and partner in obfuscating the team’s finances, Jessie Buss (played by Sally Field) and his daughter and current Lakers owner and president, Jeanie Buss (played by Hadley Robinson).
No, where “Winning Time” succeeds — and it does succeed — is in its buoyant enthusiasm for an origin story.
A flashier, sassier image for the Lakers — led by the charismatic rookie Earvin “Magic” Johnson and the serene veteran Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (breakout performances both by newcomers Quincy Isaiah and Solomon Hughes, respectively) — was just a twinkle in Buss’ eye back in that water bed. But then we get to see him put his plan in motion and it’s thrilling. He’s a good-time Charlie with shrewd instincts, part used-car salesman, part shark, and Reilly is having the time of his life playing the type of guy who takes a hairbrush to his chest fur before heading out into the world, ready to flash a smile and get something going.
These days, prestige TV based on true events tends to be of the anatomy-of-a-scandal variety, and what feels so refreshing here is that “Winning Time” is offering the energetic opposite to that, rooted in curiosity about how the '80s Showtime era of the Lakers was built. The component parts that had to come together? Over-the-top, but also human and engrossing.
Adam McKay is the show’s executive producer (he also directs the pilot episode) and it is easy to get pulled in — it’s too fun not to. I’m saying this as someone who doesn’t follow the NBA at all. I’m familiar with some of these players only because their pop-cultural reach extends beyond basketball, and even I’m in. I found the show absorbing and highly entertaining for the same reasons I found “The Last Dance,” about the 1990s Chicago Bulls, so compelling: Because sports only become interesting — for me, anyway — when you get a sense of the personalities involved. And, hoo-boy, are there some personalities involved.
Based on reporter Jeff Pearlman’s nonfiction book, “Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s,” the series is a stylistic pastiche, weaving in grainy film stock as if we needed a reminder this all took place in the past, as well as the occasional animated flourish. It’s also a cornucopia of bad wigs, with a fourth wall that drops away entirely whenever Jerry Buss turns to the camera and takes us into his confidence. There’s a winking sensibility undergirding all of it (literally, when point guard Norm Nixon is introduced, played by his son DeVaughn Nixon). The Showtime Lakers were a phenomenon of the 1980s, but it’s notable that we begin in ‘79, on the cusp of so much change to come. This isn’t the '70s of the gas shortage or anything else so depressing; this is a remembrance of things past both glitzier and hazier. Everything’s a little sun-bleached and washed out. It looks amazing.
The show can also feel glib and self-congratulatory (as McKay’s projects are wont) especially about the mere fact that it carves out moments to portray racism within the ownership and executive ranks, as when the letters “W H I T E” are spelled out across the screen as NBA commissioner Larry O’Brien spouts off about his preference for Larry Bird over Johnson.
Veteran writer and producer Rodney Barnes is one of the few Black people listed among the show’s primary creative voices and there’s some irony that the show itself, under showrunners Max Borenstein and Jim Hecht, mirrors the league’s power imbalance, with the key decision-makers (and those who stand to profit) almost exclusively white and male. The show’s title, too, deserves endless mockery; “Winning Time” is a clunky workaround that ensures HBO doesn’t have to name-check its competitor, Showtime. I mean, this seems like a silly thing to worry about, but was “Winning Time” really the next best option? “Winning Time”?! There’s so much gaudy poetry in the Showtime moniker — it’s not just a game, but a bombastic show! Both on the court and off — and “Winning Time” captures none of that. It doesn’t even roll off the tongue.
In the lead-up to the premiere, there was some hand-wringing interviews with the show’s creators about whether it matters that no one from the Lakers, past or present, wants anything to do with the series. I think it’s irrelevant. (Johnson has his own authorized docuseries coming to Apple TV+ next month.) In fact, I’d argue it is preferable the writers were free from contending with anyone’s image management; unlike Hulu’s “Pam & Tommy” (which had to re-exploit Pamela Anderson in order to tell her story, making her lack of involvement so unseemly) “Winning Time” isn’t pretending to recontextualize anyone’s past so much as it’s trying to understand how an era came together, and why.
It was led by Jerry Buss, the man with the elaborate comb-over and an instinct for backslapping, as well as the complicated dynamic between Johnson and Abdul-Jabbar, who are fleshed out together and separately, as two men struggling to figure out what exactly they want from this game, and what they can give to it. There’s also the combustible Jerry West, the star player-turned-coach-turned-front-office-man (Jason Clarke), the dweeby-steely ingenuity of head coach Jack McKinney (Tracy Letts), and the shambling then slowly ambitious Slickback Man in making in Pat Riley (Adrien Brody).
The team doesn’t even play their first game until midway through the 10-episode season, and like so many other shows, there’s some drop-off in momentum after the first few episodes. But this collection of egos is never not interesting, forever colliding in ways fascinating and strange, comedic and fraught. Game on.
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'WINNING TIME: THE RISE OF THE LAKERS DYNASTY'
3 stars (out of 4)
Rating: TV-MA (adult content, adult language, nudity)
Where to watch: Premiered Sunday on HBO
