Many people have had their fair share to say about HBO's newest series "Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty," which documents the 1979-1980 Los Angeles Lakers that won the NBA Championship that season.
Magic Johnson told TMZ a few weeks back that he is not looking forward to watching the series and said that you can't duplicate "showtime" with a live-action show.
One of the greatest players on that team, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar isn't too mad about the show being a tad bit fictional in nature but rather is upset about the show's "shallowness" and "bad storytelling."
The six-time NBA Champ wrote a lengthy article in his SubStack on Tuesday, criticizing the series for being inaccurate and boring, while calling out director Adam McKay for what Jabbar calls "the one immutable sin of writing."
"There is only one immutable sin in writing: Don’t Be Boring! 'Winning Time' commits that sin over and over," Kareem wrote.
The 75-year-old also took an issue with how he, Johnson, and the late Lakers owner Jerry Buss are portrayed in the series, calling their portrayals "caricatures" of the actual people themselves.
“I’ll start with the bland characterization. The characters are crude stick-figure representations that resemble real people the way Lego Hans Solo resembles Harrison Ford,” Abdul-Jabbar wrote. “Each character is reduced to a single bold trait as if the writers were afraid anything more complex would tax the viewers’ comprehension. Jerry Buss is Egomaniac Entrepreneur, Jerry West is a crazed Coach, Magic Johnson is Sexual Simpleton, I’m a Pompous Prick. They are caricatures, not characters.”
The Hall of Famer also pointed out an inaccuracy in how Jeanie Buss was portrayed as a "spoiled daddy's girl" who got everything handed to her, but according to Cap, Buss brought the team when Jeanie was only 17. She didn't officially start working for the team until she got her business management degree from the University of Southern California a few years later. In the series, Buss is already working for her dad despite having still been in high school during the time.
“Jeanie Buss was 17 when her father bought the Lakers, but she didn’t come to work for them until after she’d earned her business management degree from the University of Southern California and been general manager of the Los Angeles Strings, a World Team Tennis franchise,” Abdul-Jabbar wrote. “She wasn’t the naive daddy’s girl portrayed in the first few episodes. Making her a girl-child belittles her early achievements on her own.”
As for his own depiction in the show, Jabbar (who is played by the actor Solomon Hughes in the series) writes that he is most concerned with what his conduct on-screen can mean to his "Skyhook Foundation", especially after one scene showed the near 20-time NBA All-Star telling a kid to "f*** off."
“I’ve battled leukemia, heart surgery, cancer, fire, and racism—a negative portrayal of me on a TV show has no effect on me personally. But it does affect others. For example, I never said ‘F—k off’ to the child actor (Ross Harris) in Airplane!, nor have I ever said that to any child,” he wrote, noting that he often works with children as part of the Skyhook Foundation."
Unfortunately for Jabbar and others that have an issue with HBO's newest series, the show has already been picked up for a second season. Although he has no interest in the series, I'm sure we will be hearing from KAJ on this show soon.
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