Warner Bros Discovery
For HBO, the decade-long Los Angeles Lakers dynasty never really was. The premium cabler said on Sunday Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty was canceled after two seasons — only one of the team’s five NBA titles from the 1980s was shown on screen.
In the east Conversation with Vulture, Winning time EP producers Kevin Messick never had a time frame for how long the series could run, saying, “I think we’ve always taken it season by season. Before the (WGA) strike happened, we had just started talking about what would happen in Season 3, but everything was limited and shortened.”
Season 2 was supposed to end with the Lakers losing to the arch-rival Boston Celtics in the 1984 NBA Finals. This version was sent to critics early in the season, but the enhanced version that aired featured Lakers owner Jerry Buss (John C. Reilly) and his daughter and future team owner Jeanie Buss (Hadley Robinson) on a forum logo celebrating better times. . This was followed by a montage about the later fates of key players.
That final cut “could have run at the end of any season,” Messick said. “But it works no matter how long we had to prepare the story because the success and accomplishments of each of our characters rings true no matter what year it airs.”
He added: “All I can say is I don’t think there was a magic number of seasons, but if you read Jeff Pearlman’s book and the subsequent books he wrote about the Lakers later, there are definitely more stories to tell. .”
The Lakers won the NBA title in 1985 and back-to-back in 1987 and ’88.
With a beautifully rendered period production design, the series featured the likes of DeVaughn Nixon, Delante Desouza, Jimel Atkins and Quincy Isaiah as players, Jason Clarke as GM Jerry West, Adrien Brody as coach Pat Riley, and Jason Segel as a down-on-his-luck coach. Paul Westhead.
