In the final episode of Winning Time, Season 1 quickly does away with the spectacle and gets straight to the facts. The series’ biggest conceit is as a series based on real-life, it can’t deviate from the truth. But, for all the defending creators Max Borenstein and Adam McKay have done for the series against… […]
Tag: jerry west
Winning Time Episode 9 “Acceptable Loss”
Jerry West is out for blood. The real Jerry West, that is, not the Jason Clarke avatar we have seen stalk and storm through the first season of Winning Time. The flesh and bone West, who is a part of the Lakers organization as much as Kobe Bryant or Magic Johnson, is really fucking pissed. […]
J. J. Redick found out that yelling about sports is Mad Dog Russo’s 3-point line
I didn’t grow in New York, so I didn’t get to listen to Mike and the Crazy Dog . My most vivid memories of Chris “Mad Dog” Russo are working lunch shifts at a restaurant and watching his lips flap open and closed at 3X speed on a muted bar television playing MLB Network’s High […]
Jerry West and the Showtime Lakers are mad about their depiction in a Hollywood production of the most Hollywood era in sports
Jerry, Kareem, and Magic are pissed. Read more…
Is it finally winning time for Philadelphia?
On Saturday, the 76ers began the postseason by breezing past the Toronto Raptors with a ho-hum 131-111 drubbing. The 2022 playoffs is a significant crucible for Philadelphia. The legacy of The Process is at stake. If HBO ever decides to expand its foray into NBA biopics beyond the Showtime Lakers’ Winning Time, a… Read more…
Becoming Kareem
To capture the intellectual acuity of Lakers legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, an actor portraying the seven-footer would need to possess a towering level of gravitas. Winning Time creator Max Borenstein had said casting Kareem was the hardest of the Showtime Lakers. When Solomon Hughes walked through the casting door,… Read more…
Winning Time Episode 3: ‘The Best Is Yet To Come’
Damn, even legendary Chick Hearn is a bastard? Winning Time is hell-bent on tearing down all the NBA totems. Even the adored voice of the Lakers for 40-plus years, Hearn, is caught calling black security guards “gorillas. ” Writers Max Borenstein and Rodney Barnes show us the circus behind the curtain as a microcosm… Read […]
Let’s talk the Lakers, the Magic and HBO’s ‘Winning Time’
Before the Los Angeles Lakers drafted Earvin “Magic” Johnson with the first overall pick in 1979, the league was on the verge of a fate worse than death — irrelevancy. Read more…
Even when Michael Jordan turns 75, there will still be no athlete that stops a room like him
Michael Jordan turned 59 years old last week, hasn’t played professional basketball since 2003, hit that game-winning shot against the Utah Jazz nearly 25 years ago, and the NBA still belongs to him. Read more…
Assuming LeBron James wants to win a fifth championship (duh), it will take less effort from him instead of more
Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James has played a combined 61,090 combined regular season and playoff minutes, per Basketball-reference.com data. That is just 1,669 total minutes less than Hall of Fame forward Karl Malone and 5,207 minutes less than Hall of Fame center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the two gold standards in… Read more…