I was a fan of those Lakers, too, and I just can't get past the, frankly, stupid and unnecessary tinkering with history in the name of creating a (badly-told) story. The most egregious examples in the latest episode were that, despite the show claiming that the first Lakers/Celtics game that year was played in Boston around Christmas, the teams had already played at the Forum, and LA had won handily. Even the game they did create had the wrong score and the wrong outcome (a tie-breaking free throw vs. a "dramatic" last-second shot).
In addition, the show's conceit was that the Lakers were reeling under Westhead's leadership, when they had just won something like 10 of 14 at the time they went into Boston -- in February, not December. Even something as simple as the team's flirtation with Elgin Baylor was that he would take Riley's place, not Westhead. If they can't get even those basics right, they have no business painting the rest as even remotely factual. After this disaster and "Don't Look Up," I'm starting to wonder if Will Ferrell was the brains of the partnership, after all. (Which, if true, is a very, very low bar.) --Dave Sikula On Wednesday, April 20, 2022 at 8:03:30 AM UTC-7 PGage wrote: > The list of things I am actually an expert on is very small; one of the > items on that list is the Lakers in general, and the Showtime era in > particular. I actually am enjoying the HBO series, even though Kareem is my > favorite athlete of all time, and Jerry West one of my childhood heroes. > > Kareem, who has become one of the most thoughtful and insightful of public > intellectuals, is still not exactly high on the sense of humor scale, and I > think does not get McKay’s style or tone. Winning Time exaggerates Kareem’s > more surly personality traits in the pre-Magic days, and does not > sufficiently contextualizing them, but it is in the ballpark. > > But it’s portrayal of West is more puzzlingly extreme and distorted. West > was (and is) extremely intense, but it is fueled more by pathological and > self destructive anxiety, not insecurity or assholitry. I guess McKay just > wanted a comic foil, but it’s kind of mean spirited to leave such a > negatively defining imprint on such an important and tragically unhappy > figure. > > On Wed, 20 Apr 2022 at 6:57 AM 'Bob Jersey' via TVorNotTV < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> The Lakers greats took different paths to do so... West fired off a nasty >> letter to Adam McKay and HBO calling for legal retraction of his portrayal, >> while "Cap" on his (paywalled) blog generally knocked the "bland >> characterization" and questioned how it "turn[ed West] into a Wile E. >> Coyote character"... >> >> >> https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/jerry-west-winning-time-demands-retraction-1235236494/ >> >> https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/kareem-abdul-jabbar-slams-winning-time-boring-dishonest-1235235529/ >> (links) >> >> >> B >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "TVorNotTV" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/1d4796c9-294f-48a4-b250-f683ad9f1c25n%40googlegroups.com >> >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/1d4796c9-294f-48a4-b250-f683ad9f1c25n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> > -- > Sent from Gmail Mobile > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/08454f63-3929-4b17-ad8e-c546cab42cb7n%40googlegroups.com.
