Socialist Sports TV Review: “Winning Time” Season 2
Last year, James and I discussed our ambivalence about the first season of HBO’s Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty on our podcast, and with the news last month of the show’s cancellation, I wanted to say a few words about what made that series such a disappointment.
Because it really was a disappointment: There was so much high-profile talent associated with this show, from Adam McKay behind the scenes, to a star-studded cast that has famous movie stars in practically every role, to even breakout stars like Quincy Isaiah and Solomon Hughes, who were each able to credibly play sports icons, in Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. And yet the first season received only mixed reviews, and then this latest season made barely a dent when it premiered in August, before being unceremoniously canceled on the day the finale aired.
The main problem, as we said last year, was the show’s baffling decision to focus the story on the team’s owner, Jerry Buss, as played by John C. Reilly. This made very little sense in Season One, when so much time was devoted to Buss family drama instead of the Lakers’ run to the 1980 NBA title. But there was at least some logic there: The 1979-80 season was Buss’ first as an owner, so using his transition into the league as an entry point into the story made some sense. Buss was at least involved in the major moments of that season, like his decision to draft Magic and his hiring of a new coach.
But in Season Two, it made no sense at all. For most of this season, the Buss storyline was a complete distraction from everything happening with the team. Season Two covered three more years than Season One — despite being 30% shorter — so many episodes were incredibly overstuffed, and there were multiple big time jumps. As a result, many huge stories get barely mentioned, or completely glossed over. Something as significant as winning the 1982 Finals gets just a throwaway line. Meanwhile, there are seemingly dozens of scenes devoted to Jerry Buss’ dating life and whether he’s going to play Monopoly with his kids. There’s barely any attempt to connect these stories to what is happening with the actual team, and they feel like a total waste of time.
And yet the show desperately needs the audience to care about Jerry Buss. This is the central conceit of the show: that the Lakers’ fresh, revolutionary dynasty of the 1980s was in some ways an extension of Buss’ flamboyant personality, and a result of decisions he was savvy enough to make. Unfortunately, this is just an impossible lie to swallow, and the show doesn’t even do a good job of trying to tell it.
Indeed, the one time in the second season that the show does actually slow down and focus on a team conflict (as opposed to racing through whole stretches of time in some frantic montage) it addresses the coaching change from Paul Westhead to Pat Riley — which made Buss look like a complete idiot!
In case you are unfamiliar with the story: Paul Westhead was hired as an assistant coach for the Lakers in 1979, but then quickly had to take on the role of head coach when his boss got into a serious bicycle accident. He rose to the occasion and helped lead the team to a championship in 1980, and was given the job permanently. But a little more than a year later, after a feud with Magic Johnson, he was fired just 11 games into the 1981-82 season.
And Buss’ role in the whole thing was purely destructive, making things worse at every step of the process. First of all, he exacerbated locker room tensions by signing Magic Johnson to a ridiculous 25-year, $25 million contract extension before the ‘81-82 season began. In the show, he tries to do this quietly, to limit any blowback from the league and the media, but this is not true: In real life, Buss was very public with the announcement.
As anyone could have predicted, this led to resentment in the locker room. There were already reports of internal problems on the team, since Johnson had been injured for much of the previous season, and his return created a “divided” roster, according to then-assistant coach Pat Riley. So of course, a public announcement that Johnson was going to be a Laker for life, after just two years in the league (one of which he mostly missed with a knee injury), created some tension on the team, as well as confusion over who was in charge. Buss almost sounded like he was deliberately trying to make people resent Magic, telling reporters, “He may even be my coach. Or general manager. Or maybe he’ll run the team and I’ll just sit back and watch.”
And it’s not like this contract was some benevolent act. Despite the flashy numbers, it was a very team-friendly deal. Almost immediately, Magic’s $1 million salary was low by league standards, and he was underpaid — which is the whole reason NBA owners liked to lock star players into long-term deals. (When watching this show, another former Lakers star, Shaquille O’Neal, called the contract the “worst ever” and wondered how it was even legal.)
Then, according to the show, when Magic told Buss that he wasn’t getting along with coach Westhead, Buss simply ignored him. Which makes NO SENSE if you’ve just committed to a player for 25 years, and told the public he was basically your GM. So Magic, just months after signing a contract to be a Laker for life, asked to be traded — at which point Buss fired Westhead the next day.
Somewhat hilariously, Buss has always maintained he was going to fire Westhead ANYWAY, and that he wasn’t simply caving to Magic’s demand, which is just obviously untrue and even the show barely takes the claim seriously. We know it’s untrue because of Buss' next bonehead decision: He fired Westhead without even knowing who was going to coach the team, holding an entire press conference where he said former coach Jerry West would be the team’s “offensive coach” (a position which does not actually exist and which nobody else involved, West included, seemed to understand). It was only West’s refusal to take this phony position that led to Pat Riley becoming the head coach. Riley, of course, coached the Lakers to four championships, and eventually made the Hall of Fame, but he essentially only got the job by accident.
To recap: Jerry Buss 1) exacerbated tension on the team by announcing an exploitive, self-aggrandizing contract extension; 2) ignored the negative impact of that tension, even when his employees warned him about it; 3) immediately caved to his star player’s public demands after ignoring private entreaties to fix the problems between player and coach; 4) fired his coach without a replacement; 5) tried to trick someone who had turned the job down into taking a fake position that would be essentially the same as the job he’d just refused; 6) was only bailed out of these inexplicably bad decisions because West refused the fake job, and the only guy left to do it happened to be a future Hall of Famer.
Given how it all plays out, it could be a great depiction of the way owners just fail their way towards success. The show doesn’t really sugarcoat it: Buss is a completely inept executive, but because he can’t be fired, he can just stumble foolishly forward until all the highly talented people around him figure it out, at which point he can claim the credit and reap the benefit. In some ways, it’s a perfect illustration of how labor appropriation works. The season (and the series) ends with Jerry and his daughter lying on the empty court yelling, “We own this!” truly underscoring how parasitic the ownership class is: In spite of contributing absolutely nothing of value to the team, they are the beneficiaries of its success.
But none of this makes them interesting, or worth making a show about. If the show had been more about the team itself, and featured them trying to succeed in spite of interventions of their sex-addicted, moronic owner, then I would love that. But Jerry Buss is always at the center of the narrative, taking up most of the energy and screen time. The show seems to think the audience will care about him simply because he’s at the top of the pyramid, and as a result of all the time devoted to the adventures of Jerry Buss, the show was forced to depict the other, more interesting people in the most ham-fisted, superficial ways.
This is why, for as dumb as the show makes Buss out to be, Winning Time is still ultimately pro-owner propaganda. He’s the only character who really gets humanized with any real depth (except maybe Magic Johnson), and the show is ultimately on his side. This doesn’t inherently doom the show — it’s obviously possible to make good art with bad politics — but it is hard to make a good show about a boring person. And owners are generally pretty boring. At least this one is…