'Winning Time' (Finally) Slows Down and Enjoys the Show
Let's start with the fundamentals here: I loved HBO's Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, which debuted its first season in March 2022. It had a lot going for it. The fourth-wall-breaking, surrealist approach to the late '70s. Quincy Isaiah's downright magnetic performance as Magic Johnson. Newcomer Solomon Hughes going straight from Stanford lectures to HBO Sunday nights, making the transition look as effortless as the skyhook itself. At the center of it all was John C. Reilly's Jerry Buss, who—I'll say it—was snubbed at last year's Emmy Awards, as loaded as the Outstanding Lead Actor In a Drama Series category was.
At first, the hyperbole was welcome—showtime is, well, showtime. I disagreed with those who let their Adam McKay fatigue fuel their criticism of Winning Time and its Big Short-esque cutaways, and most certainly all of the real-life Lakers legends who didn't enjoy the series for what it was: a damn good time.
But as Winning Time moved along, the series increasingly needed to take a beat—to slow down, enjoy the show, cut a few of the winks and giggles, and look at the hearts of its subjects. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a pretty complex dude! But the script was a bit more interested in all of the times he may or may not have beefed with Magic Johnson. Winning Time's its brilliant season finale showed some awareness of this, in addition to solving another weak point: the basketball! A show about the Showtime-era Lakers needs more hoops! You need to insert a few drops of sports-movie DNA into these things, a la Moneyball and I, Tonya.
Praise the basketball gods, then, that Winning Time Season Two's premiere—which debuted on HBO and Max this Sunday night—has not one, but two delightful basketball sequences. The first: a classic beef-at-practice montage, where Johnson runs the A team, and Kareem runs the B team.Egos clash. Antics ensue. The second: the moments before Johnson's brutal knee injury in 1981, where the stadium lights dim, focusing solely on the towering point guard. We see Magic Johnson do Magic Johnson things—dishing and dribbling—with Winning Time's camerawork downright reveling in the iconography of one of the greatest periods (and players) in American sports.
But that's just the basketball.
Winning Time Season Two picks up just after the Lakers win 1980 NBA title, showing us what our tall friends are handling the success. Johnson feels ready to take over captain duties, but—yikes—accidentally impregnating a hookup shifts his focus. Related: Abdul-Jabbar and his wife have a child, whom he would like to be a better father to than he was with his older children. Meanwhile Buss, in the wake of his success with the Lakers, decides to move his three children (Jeanie, Jimmy, and Johnny) under his roof. The goal: teach them how to thrive as sports-team owners and, you know, try to parent a bit. See a theme here?
This is where Winning Time avoids a sophomore slump: taking a break every now and then to focus—really focus—on the immense growing pains of its now-legendary subjects. Magic Johnson wasn't always Mr. Cool, Calm, and Collected (just the first one), nor was Abdul-Jabbar basketball's poet laureate. "In so many ways, it's a season about different characters who become fathers and who are struggling with their own fathers," Winning Time's showrunner, Max Borenstein, told me in June. The focus on fatherhood, of the joys and struggles of living as a son and a parent, is the perfect recipe to take Winning Time from a highly-stylized time machine to a genuine character study.
But that doesn't mean Winning Time does away with the McKayian goofballing. With so much focus on the inner lives of Johnson, Abdul-Jabbar, and the Buss family, it's a welcome sight to see, a little over midway through the episode, Johnson's busted knee start speaking to him. Magic, well, he speaks back. And... they bicker. It's funny, chaotic, and—this time around, especially—earned.
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