I understand the basic premise of basketball – put the big orange ball into the correct hoop – but beyond that elevator pitch, the game is a mystery to me. It’s full of fussy rules and arcane procedures, not to mention a cultural history that flourishes around, and at times supersedes, the actual game. But even I, doofus that I am, am aware of the LA Lakers and Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and they – part of something referred to as the “Showtime” era of professional basketball – are the subjects of Adam McKay’s new mini-series, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty (Sky Atlantic).
Winning Time focuses on two men at the start of their journeys into basketball. John C Reilly plays Jerry Buss (Dr Buss, as he prefers to be called), who acquires the Lakers franchise through a complex cash and real estate deal, and makes a 19-year-old college baller, Earvin “Magic” Johnson (Quincy Isaiah), his first big signing in 1979. Charismatic, pragmatic and highly affable, Dr Buss is on a mission to save the NBA, and he believes his Michiganite protégé – who shares much of that charisma, pragmatism, and affability – is the man to do it. It’s Dr Buss and Magic Johnson contra mundum, though if you know anything of the latter’s biography, you know where this tale will end up.
