Starring: John C. Reilly, Adrien Brody, Quincy Isaiah, Solomon Hughes, Jason Segel, Jason Clarke, Hadley Robinson, Sean Patrick Small
Winning can be tense and unhappy business. The end of season one of Show Time...er, Winning Time saw the Los Angeles Sixers win the NBA title in new owner Dr. Jerry Buss' (Reilly) first season. What to do for an encore? Is there anywhere to go but down? Season two of Winning Time begins at the start of pre-season following the Lakers' 1980 championship. Cockiness has set in throughout the organization. Buss assumes that if winning a title in his first season happened, then a repeat is almost assured. This is not the case. By mid-season, last year's win is a distant memory, especially with Magic Johnson's leg injury keeping him on the sidelines for months. The Lakers are then knocked out in the first round of the playoffs by the underdog Houston Rockets.
Coach Paul Westhead (Segel), who led the team to the previous year's championship, finds himself on the outs with the team and management by implementing "The System", which is more Westhead's attempt to make his mark on the team which never quite warmed to him and a league that thinks he lucked into the Lakers' title. As insecure as Westhead was the previous season, he overcorrects into a stubborn, unyielding jerk by constantly butting heads with GM Jerry West (Clarke-much calmer this year) over proposed roster changes and his players over his insufferable belief in his system. A handful of games into the following season, Westhead is replaced by Pat Riley (Brody) and the dynasty is on its way.
This season focuses plenty on Magic Johnson (Isaiah) and his numerous issues, including his leg injury and his conflict with Dr. Buss over wanting a lifetime contract, an unheard of proposition. Dr. Buss relents, but when a disillusioned Magic demands a trade unless Westhead is fired, Buss wonders if the lifetime contract was worth it. Buss undergoes quite a few headaches, including family squabbles, a renewed interest in a former flame, and of course trying to restore the Lakers to their former glory. If you recall last season, Jerry West complained about his characterization as a drunken man with volcanic anger issues. This season, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar should be the one complaining. This version of the Lakers legend is an unsmiling, unhappy man to whom basketball is a chore. Was it that way? I can imagine sometimes and let's not forget the possibility of dramatic license.
Winning Time flows in much the same manner as season one, with the team's ups and downs engagingly chronicled and convincing capture of the period. Reilly has a ball with this role as Buss, with the novelty of owning a professional basketball team wearing off and the daily pressures beginning to seep into his psyche and somewhat altering his fun-loving demeanor. We see new sides of Magic, when he realizes his million-dollar smile isn't going to get him out of every personal and professional jam. His rivalry with Larry Bird (who matches Abdul-Jabbar in the unsmiling department) is a focus as well. Brody gives us a Pat Riley who is now promoted from assistant to head coach in a manner we may never see in professional sports again, thank goodness.
Unfortunately, season two will be the last for this series, and the season abruptly ends with the Lakers losing to the rival Boston Celtics in seven games in the 1983-84 NBA Finals. I think Bird's face may have betrayed a slight smile, but the rest of the decade's accomplishments are displayed in an epilogue, so we are not shown how the Lakers finally became the dominant team of the 1980's. HBO had a different idea.
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