Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, Now TV
High quality, ambitious television, that still manages to be entertaining can sometimes feel hard to come by. Then something like Winning Time comes along that reminds you how rich TV can be when creators get it right.
Adam McKay produced and directed the pilot for this series about the rise of the LA Lakers in the 1980s – and his fingerprints are all over it. Fans of The Big Short will enjoy Winning Time’s characters candidly breaking the fourth wall to explain their most cynical and comically straightforward feelings.
Among the shows other stylistic and experimental creative decisions that work is Winning Time’s dual aesthetic. All of the scenes are shot on film, but some are shot on 8mm, and with old Ikegami tube cameras that accurately replicate how basketball coverage appeared on TV in the 80s. At times you feel like you are watching stock footage, then you see the actors and your brain reminds you it’s just a drama. Shooting in this way really does elevate the biopic/ docudrama genre in making the world of the characters feel more real and more epic.
Whereas the look of Winning Time is working to make things feel more real, the characters are doing the opposite. Almost everyone in this series is a larger than life, whacky caricature of themselves – with an aspect of their personality being turned up to eleven. Larry Bird, a man who comes across as a middle American dad in real life, is a tobacco spitting hick in this. Likewise, Jerry West, a serene statesman in interviews, is here a psychopath who needs to win to shake the crippling pain of his losses.
The latter is a concurrent theme in Winning Time. The show is in part a commentary on toxic masculinity and the desperation and turmoil that often underpins a mans’ success in the land of the American dream. Jerry Buss, a man who won the NBA championship in his first year as owner is in fact on borrowed time and borrowed credit. His elaborate combover provides the perfect metaphor for his financial cover ups.
Kareem Abdul Jabbar is contemporaneously recognised as a mythical figure and one of the greatest to ever play the game - but he wears the burden of how white men truly view him in his every expression.
Who knew a look into the rise of the Lakers could provide so much insight into 1980s America? The black experience in the US is another key thread in the series, explored through Jabbar, who changed his name from the one that was given to his family by a French slaver. Spencer Haywood’s cocaine addiction is similarly explained in this series as an inability to deal with the US’s slaving past.
Along these lines, Winning Time makes the case that sporting history is important cultural history, that is intrinsically fun to watch.
