Los Angeles Lakers player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (seated left, wearing goggles) and coach Jerry West (standing center, beige suit) celebrate during a game in 1977.
John G. Zimmerman /Getty ImagesHBO‘s Winning Time is a swaggering, sensational dramatization of a thrillingly glamorous moment in basketball history. But some viewers aren’t enjoying the acclaimed TV show: Former LA Lakers coach Jerry West has demanded a retraction from HBO about the way he’s portrayed in the series, while former star player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar calls the show “deliberately dishonest” and “drearily dull.”
Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty tells the story of the LA Lakers team in the late 1970s and the 1980s, when they found a world-beating formula with Magic Johnson and Abdul-Jabbar setting the court alight. The show stars John C. Reilly as new owner Jerry Buss, portrayed as the catalyst for this triumphant era. Airing now and streaming on HBO Max, the series has already been renewed for a second season.
Jason Clarke plays coach Jerry West, a former Lakers player whose silhouette is still seen in the iconic NBA logo. In the show, West is depicted as a volatile (and slightly buffoonish) character at odds with Buss. But West’s attorney disputes this characterization in a letter to HBO, which says the series has “caused great distress to Jerry and his family” and demands an apology and retraction from HBO.
According to the letter, Winning Time “took a happy and super successful Lakers era and turned it into a pulpy soap opera.” The letter, reported earlier by Variety, says West had a harmonious relationship with Buss.
From left: Jason Clarke as Jerry West and John C. Reilly as Dr. Jerry Buss in a typically combustive scene from HBO’s Winning Time.
Warrick Page/HBOAbdul-Jabbar also disparaged the show in his Substack newsletter, calling it a “Frankenstein’s monster” of gossip and fiction. “The issue with Winning Time,” he said, “isn’t so much that the filmmakers deliberately avoided facts as if they were an STD, but that they replaced solid facts with flimsy cardboard fictions that don’t go deeper and offer no revealing insights.”
Winning Time is based on the book Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s by Jeff Pearlman. The author also weighed in, taking to Twitter for a lengthy thread in which he points out that Abdul-Jabbar refused to be interviewed or involved with the book or the TV series. Pearlman calls the show “an ode to the Lakers” and defends it as “a TV show. Entertainment. Not a documentary.”
HBO didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
