Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers was a difficult series that could never really find its footing. News of its cancelation this week probably comes as no surprise for some and a shock for others. The series created by Max Borenstein and Jim Hicht and spear-headed by Adam McKay could’ve been a wonderful look at how the L.A. Lakers in the 1980s changed the NBA forever.
Part of the problem with the second season was it seemed to cram so much into its seven episodes that you felt like you might have missed something. The first season was 10 epsiodes and it seemed to throw every detail into the series. This one goes through the disastrous Lakers’ 0-4 lost to the Philadelphia 76ers in the 1983 NBA finals in the first act of an episode. And there’s probably a reason they wanted to move pass this moment quickly because it seems to want to portray the Lakers as winners.
I have to say I found it comical how Paul Westhead (Jason Segel) went from being a sheepish square former high school coach who Kareem Abdul-Jabaar (Solomon Hughes) didn’t think highly of to walking around like a movie star with a slick suave haircut and having his own system of coaching he called, “The System.” I don’t know if Westhead got this cocky in real life but his firing was mostly caused by the fights he had with Earvin “Magic” Johnson (Quincy Isiah). Westhead felt he could control the players like they were student athletes but that was his problem. And that’s why Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss (John C. Reilly) let him go.
But the series moves too quick that Kareem is reduced to a supporting character, when this was when he was really still on top. Most of the characters introduced in the first season rarely pop up. I think Gabby Hoffman’s Claire Rothman only appears in two or three episodes and only in a few scenes. On the other hand, Adrien Brody comes into his own as Pat Riley as he was named head coach or more or less pigeon-holed into the position during an impromptu press conference he didn’t know about. Brody has had a rough 20 years since his Oscar-winning win in The Pianist but you see that he was finally nailing the role of Riley. It’s a shame we won’t see any more. Speaking of Riley, his wife, Chris (Gillian Jacobs) pops up in maybe two of three scenes the whole season.
I guess it has the same problem the first season did with too many characters and very litte time to focus on what is going on. While the first season showed Larry Bird (Sean Patrick Small) briefly, it delves more into his past and the rivalry between the Lakers and the Boston Celtics. In the first season, Bird was more or less a redneck sterotyping spitting tobacco juice into a cup. Here, we see that the “Hick from French Lick” was really just a small-town Indiana boy who had a more difficult history such as the suicide of his father.
It’s these types of episodes that could have made the second season better. It seems they pulled back the comedy to focus on more of the real-life drama. That makes the series work more. I also feel that after the real-life Lakers and those connected to them voiced their displeasure with the portrayals, the showrunners decided to go a little easier on them this season. This might explain why Jerry West (Jason Clarke) isn’t acting like the spoiled kid in the cereal aisle spewing profanities as he did during the first season and why Chick Hearn (Spencer Garrett) spends most of his scenes just commenting the games. Reportedly West wasn’t too happy with his portrayal and friends and fans of Hearn were upset over his portrayal.
Without a doubt the 1979-1980 was an outrageous roller coaster of a season. After Jack McKinny (Tracey Letts) had to step down after a head injury from a bicycle accident putting an unprepared Westhead in charge, it was the type of Cinderalla story most sports movies are made of. But with Westhead raging war with Johnson, it could make for some serious drama on screen. However, they seemed to want to get to Riley taking over and focusing more on the Lakes/Celtics rivalry which is shown to end in a 1984 loss where Laker players fought and punched Celtics fans who stormed the court. But the Lakers came back and defeated the Celtics in 1985 in a 4-2 series. Yet I guess there’s only so much you can do with the back and forth of the two teams over the years.
I feel that even the producers felt that the end was near as the end of the seventh and final episode of the second season has title cards showing all that happened in the 40 years since the devastating 1984 final. Yet, it still feels much unfinished. I kept wondering what happened to Paula Abdul (Carina Conti) who brought a rhythmic dance approach to cheerleading but is hardly seen. And Jerry’s problems with his daughter, Jeanie (Hadley Robinson) seem to be easily resolved for the convenience of the plot.
In short, I can understand why HBO and its parent company Warner Bros. Discovery canceled it. Even thouhg it received good reviews, people weren’t really tuning it as much. I feel they felt the end was near by tacking sequence showing all that happened to the major characters.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 