Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty

Funny thing about the waves the show is making - I don't remember this much of a stink when the book came out. Is McKay taking a lot of artistic liberties?

 

Reilly is great as Buss, as he’s got that glean in his eye, but man would Philip Seymour Hoffman have been even better.

 

I played entire ABA seasons by myself on this game when I was a kid. Even drew in a 3-point line (the back two holes) and colored the ping-pong ball red, white and blue. I absolutely loved this game, but it disappeared when my parents moved from WNY to Florida.

 

What a crappy episode last night (Episode 6) but we were due for a dog hour after 4 & 5 were so great.

The part that irks me is this characterization to make Westhead seem like he didn't know how to coach a basketball team. He was the head coach at La Salle (in Philly) for nine years. Not a Power 5 but, back then, a decent East Coast program. He won 58% of his games there. It's not like he's me trying to coaching middle school girls a few years ago.

 

Magic's "advisor" "Dr. Day" is based on Charles Tucker, a former training camp ABA player, who was working as a youth counselor in Lansing before latching on to Earvin Johnson when he was still in junior high.

Winning Time" depicts NIKE as just barely struggling along in the shoe market in 1979. In fact they were doing very well, most of the players on the 1977 Trail Blazers championship team wore NIKE and they got a lot of exposure out of that. NIKE was the up and coming contender while Converse and Adidas were the old school favorites. And Converse did not only sign Magic Johnson, but also Larry Bird, Dr. J and Isiah Thomas a couple years later. It's not like Magic made some horrible life destroying gaffe signing with Converse.

Tucker served as Magic's full fledged agent from the time he turned pro until about 1990, I believe. (I believe his agent business is still doing quite well.)

As far as I know, Tucker never tried to get Magic hooked up with his daughter (really I'm not sure he even had a daughter) but Magic would fuck pretty much anyone who would stand still for 30 seconds, so who knows.

 

One thing that occurred to me this week is how little actual basketball has been seen on screen in this series.

That's probably a key for a good "reality-based," sports drama series: your actors can't recreate game action realistically enough for people who saw the original action to really buy it,
so focus your attention off the field.

 

I wonder how the shooting schedule was for the basketball games. That would have to be really expensive and also trying to get a few thousand extras in the stands and all dressed and styled like it's 1979. Probably shoot all of the Lakers "home games" on the same day and any road games but with different courts swapped in.

 

Considering how bad most sports movies are at actual playing of sports, I'll take it.

 

I read the book years ago, and I really enjoyed it. It was a while ago so I don't recall much in detail, but I believe the Hollywood script writers are using the book as a jumping off point more than a bible.

 

I can’t decide who was worse between Anthony Perkins in Fear Strikes Out or LeVar Burton in One in a Million: The Ron LeFlore Story
Though Piersall gets bonus points for climbing the Fenway Park netting

 

I suppose I'd guess "Hoosiers" is probably one of the better movies at depicting game action fairly accurately to how it really was: most of the Hickory Huskers players were fairly good high-school or small-college players in the mid-1980s, so they were probably roughly comparable to high level prep players in the early 50s. With of course the prominent exception of Maris Valainis as Jimmy Chitwood; Valainis was strictly an intramural level player in real life. (On the other hand, Wade Schenck, who played the geeky Ollie, was supposedly one of the better, if not the best, of the Huskers at actually playing basketball.)

 

ESPN basketball analyst Jay Bilas appeared on an episode of The White Shadow.

"Then a 16-year-old high school sophomore, Bilas portrayed an opposing team member. "I had a great time doing that episode," said Bilas. "I remember thinking that all the guys were just high schoolers like me, so I was surprised to find out they were all in their twenties and thirties, and none of them could play, except for Coolidge!"