I'll agree it's fiction, rather than a documentary, but the problem for me is
less that the Lakers/Celtics game was in February and the second game they
played than it's utterly baffling what the point McKay wants to make is. If
he's going to portray the Boston fans as racist assholes, sticking to the
actual chronology doesn't change that. How does changing that or how the game
actually ended (on a free throw, basically) enhance the story?
How does making up crap about West and Kareem in the way he does contribute to
our understanding of them? The former was -- and is -- high-strung, but showing
him as psychotic is as lazy as having the withdrawn Kareem swear at a child.
Maybe Westhead was under pressure, but to lie about his record going into the
Boston game and all but say Baylor was being brought in to replace him, rather
than Riley is, again, sloppy and unnecessary.
As I said, between this and the "LOOK AT HOW FUNNY WE ARE!" tone of "Don't Look
Up," it's pretty clear McKay has one gear, and he's worn it out.
--Dave Sikula
On Saturday, April 30, 2022, 07:39:12 AM PDT, PGage <[email protected]>
wrote:
change
I have just watched episodes 5-8, and have to say I am liking it more and
more. Of course it gets many of the historical details wrong. I believe the
Lakers and Celtics did play in late December that first year, but that was the
Forum game Dave mentions the Lakers won handily. The nail biter at the Garden
was a few weeks later.
But the show is not a documentary, and it is not about getting archival facts
correct. With all the liberties they took, I thought the episode about that
first game in the Garden really captured the sense Laker fans had of the deck
being stacked against them when playing the Celtics, and the role of racism and
back room business decisions in how the league operated.
While they probably exaggerated Larry Bird a little, they nailed his basic
personality and basketball skills exactly. Nothing gets my juices flowing like
a couple of rounds of a good “Fuck Boston” chant. Though the truth is, if I
were to make a series about that time one of the main themes would be how I
went from absolutely hating Larry Bird, and seeing him as an overrated, racist
asshole, to loving him, for his excellence on the court, his cold hearted trash
talking, take no shit independence and, most of all, for how he, almost alone
among basketball stars, stood by Magic Johnson during the most difficult days
of his life.
I worshipped Chick Hearn, so am not pleased with his depiction, though at the
time my family and friends always joked about how the role of his Color Man
(whether Lynn Shackelford, Pat Riley, or Keith Erickson) was to say “Right
Chick” and then shut up, so I have to admit it’s not unrecognizable.
I still find the portrayal of West to be mean spirited, but as the show
progresses they are getting closer to a more accurate depiction of him as
intense, driven and miserable, not a thin skinned, vain asshole. I really liked
the scene of West and Magic talking after a regular season loss to Dr J’s 76ers
(setting up things to come) with West talking about needing to win more than
needing to be liked. I’m not sure how literal that is, as my memory is Magic
came into the league with the Will to win, but it makes an important point
effectively.
I also like how the show is presenting and preparing the ground for the
emergence of Pat Riley. Many casual fans probably assumed he was already the
Head Coach this first year, but his cool, controlled intensity was as much an
act of self creation as was that of Buss and Magic. I learned to love Phil
Jackson, and it is hard to argue against him being the best NBA coach of all
time, but Riles is still my favorite coach, in any sport, as he really knew how
to treat grown men and elite, skilled athletes with respect for their autonomy,
while still pushing and shaping them to play as a team.
At the end of the 1970s the NBA was struggling. It had been through a series of
cocaine scandals, it was seen as too Black to attract big advertisers, and the
championship series was on tape delay at 11:30 pm in Los Angeles. A handful of
players, owners and league executives intentionally transformed it into
something else, compromised by but not completely submitting too the dominant
institutional and street racism of the day. And Magic invented a way of playing
basketball that really was O Jogo Bonito, which at the time we knew was
singular, and would not be seen again.
So no, if you want to know the schedule and score of every Laker game in the
1979-80 season, don’t watch this show; check Basketball-Reference.com. But if
you want to get a sense of the time, and of the emergence of a new thing, this
HBO series is not a bad place to start.
On Thu, 21 Apr 2022 at 3:49 AM 'Dave Sikula' via TVorNotTV
<[email protected]> wrote:
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
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