In the final episode of Winning Time, Season 1 gets straight to the facts and does away with the spectacle. The biggest conceit of the series is that it can't deviate from the truth. The show, at its core, is a fictionalized account of real people, a real team, and a real outcome.
In the pivotal Game 5 of the 1980 Finals, the Los Angeles Lakers and Philadelphia 76ers are tied at 2-2. In the second half, the Lakers captain injured his foot, but he came back to win in historic fashion. He will not be able to play in the next game. It is up to the Lakers coaching staff to experiment with something new.
Anyone with a modicum of NBA lore knows what will happen next. Magic Johnson became the first player in history to score 42 points and 15 rebound in his first year as a center. Jerry West teased a move from the start that would kill the joy out of the rookies. Magic can make lemonade out of lemons. Jack McKinney, a former Lakers coach, foretold a move that would be offered to Paul Westhead in the episode. Magic became one of the top 10 players of all time and the greatest Laker ever to those of a certain age after winning the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player award.
You have it. Jerry Buss lifted his family name out of poverty and into the history books by completing his rags-to-riches story. Magic pulls his bootstraps up through his blue-collar beginnings. The Lakers went from laughingstock to a legacy team.
Winning Time was not created as an entertaining Wiki article. They wanted to show the trial and tribulation behind the scenes of the Lakers' rise to greatness. Winning Time is not just about a team's path to glory, it is also a story of a character changing for the better.
Winning Time failed because it could not have been genuinely transgressive. There was never a complete character for the character ofClaireRothman. We don't see her outside of The Forum. We leave her with no idea of her life outside Buss. When Buss brings in his daughter, who will eventually help turn the Lakers back into a champion in 2020, just to ask her opinion of which of her brothers should be given the empty board seat, we see how little Buss has grown.
Winning Time should have told the story from Sally Field's point of view. Both could have had more screen time. Also, Rothman. The books written by the stars and others of the main players are in our possession. We don't know much about Jeanie's rise to power with the Lakers. Winning Time could have shown us more from this point of view. We are given a bunch of bad men trying to break good, fail, and try again.
The series ties up all the minor storylines left open from the pilot to make it a typical TBS/TNT drama. Magic passes the torch to Kareem. McKinney and Westhead reconciled. Kareem learns to let go. Buss defeated Red Auerbach. There is a strange but maybe true storyline involving Spencer Haywood hiring druggies to kill his former teammates.
It is important to note that Haywood would kick drugs and turn his life around. It could be the best happy ending of any Laker great portrayed. Wood Harris stole the entire series, giving the best performance while telling one of the few stories even old heads weren't familiar with.
The majority of the episode is devoted to reliving Game 6 of the NBA finals, which serves as a history lesson to the younger generation who think the NBA started with King James. The best part of the series is the fake basketball on the screen, but it isn't saying much since most of the basketball scenes were mashed together in post-production. Most of the actors playing the Lakers legends barely played college ball.
It's not a bad thing that the episode is a Hoosiers/ Air Bud level of championship game histrionics. The show has been trying for more than nine episodes. It tried to be a statement on the failures of capitalism, the invisible Black man, and the ills of American society. In the end, it decided to be enjoyable.
It colors the scene and episode with a sourness when Magic tells versions of his mother, girlfriend, and Larry Bird that exist in his head to fuck off in his living room. Magic gets the girl after winning multiple titles. He gets every girl. And more. We still don't know much about the man who has been a part of our pop-cultural consumption for more than 40 years before the series started.
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