Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty

The show is moving in fits and starts. They're giving the impression West was an awful coach; he wasn't, he won almost 60 percent of his games in three seasons. But it was his bad luck to start coaching during the seasons the Blazers and then the Sonics won titles with young upstart teams that looked like they'd dominate for a decade.

They've also barely mentioned Bill Sharman; he appears to mainly be some old guy who stands around making snarky remarks at West on the golf course.

Sharman was pretty strongly involved in most of the moves building the Showtime dynasty. (And of course he himself was a protege of Red Auerbach from way way back. When Sharman took over the Lakers as coach the main storyline was that he was recasting them in the mold of the classic Russell Celtics -- which he did.)

For that matter, Sharman had coached West to his only NBA title in 72, and was only 53 when Magic came out. When West stepped down, I believe there were some mutterings about Sharman possibly returning to the bench.

 

The idea that Jack McKinney was the prime genius behind the Trail Blazers championship in 77 is also quite a novel concept as far as I am aware.

As I recall McKinney was considered a real good X's-and-O's technician, but Jack Ramsay himself was no slouch on the clipboards, and the main stroke of strategic genius behind the Blazers' title was Bill Walton's decision to get healthy and stay healthy for (almost) a whole season.

 

Was West this much of a cartoon?

 

West was a fine coach. Hired good assistants (Albeck, McCloskey). But he hated hated hated hated every minute of it. Mostly because he suffered from the "why the hell can't these players make it look easy like I did?" syndrome.

As for Sharman, his voice never really recovered after he lost it during the 1971-72 season. For the last 41 years of his life he spoke in a high-pitched scratchy squeak. Even went one year (1988) without speaking at all in an attempt to repair his vocal cords. So not sure if he could have ever coached again.

Sharman trivia: He owns the most championship rings as a player, coach, general manager, team president and consultant with 17.

 

Sharman trivia: He owns the most championship rings as a player, coach, general manager, team president and consultant with 17.

He was also on the bench for Bobby Thompson's homer in Game 3 of the 1951 NL playoffs, having been recalled late in the season by Brooklyn. He never appeared in a MLB game, however. He was a career .281 hitter in five minor-league seasons.

 

I never knew Riley's father was a professional baseball player with an MLB cup of coffee during WWII. He has an interesting Wikipedia bio. More than 2,200 games, almost exclusively at the lower levels.

Leon Francis Riley Sr. (August 20, 1906 – September 13, 1970) was an American professional baseball player who became a manager in the minor leagues. During a playing career that stretched from 1927 to 1942 and 1944 to 1949, Riley appeared in 2,267 minor league games for 21 different teams, with a brief trial with the 1944 Philadelphia Phillies during the World War II manpower shortage. He was the father of Lee and Pat Riley.

Born in Princeton, Nebraska, Riley was an outfielder and first baseman who stood 6 ft 1 in (1.85 m) (185 cm) tall, weighed 185 pounds (83.9 kg), batted left-handed, and threw right-handed. Although he reached the top minor-league level in 116 games for the Rochester Red Wings (1932) and Baltimore Orioles (1939) of the Class AA International League, he spent most of his playing career in the Class A Western League, leading that loop in triples with 27 in 1929.

In 1937, Riley became the playing manager with the Beatrice Blues in the Class D Nebraska State League. The Blues finished well below .500 that year, but Riley won the NSL batting title with a .372 batting average. In 1938, the Blues posted a winning mark and Riley repeated as batting champ with a .365 average, while also leading the NSL in runs batted in. He would manage for 11 seasons (1937–38; 1940–41; 1945–51) in the minor leagues, including stints in the farm systems of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Phillies. Riley led the Class C Canadian–American League in home runs with 32 in 1941 and the Class D PONY League with 13 in 1945, when he was 39 years old.

Over his long minor-league playing career, Riley batted .314 with 2,418 hits and 248 home runs. In April 1944, at age 37, Riley appeared in four games for the Phillies, with 12 at bats, one hit (a double), and one RBI — for a career MLB batting average of .083. As a manager, he led the Schenectady Blue Jays to the 1947 Can-Am League championship.

Leon Riley died in Schenectady, New York, aged 64, in 1970.[citation needed]

 

Gary Vitti, the longtime Lakers trainer, was initially hired as an advisor for the series, but he walked off the job for how they portrayed West and other things.

'A total mischaracterization': Portrayal of Jerry West in HBO's 'Winning Time' sparks criticism

Sally Field as Buss' mom and Michael Chiklis as Red Auerbach have been fun, too.

I've liked seeing Red portrayed, because I got the chance to meet him when I was 13 in the mid-90s. One of my aunts worked in the same building in DC where his office was when he was still working as president of the Celtics. My aunt knew I was into sports and the NBA, and she got it arranged where my dad and I got to spend maybe an hour talking with him in his office one day. He was very cordial and politely brought and end to the meeting so he could leave for a card game. My dad and I leave the building, and out we see Red pull away in his red convertible.

Got a couple autographs from Red, a Bird jersey and Celtics jacket, and a program from the last game at the Garden.

 

Johnson… stay on A. Nixon, you, too. Plus Wilkes, Kareem… and Cooper.

Best 10 seconds I’ve seen on TV in a long time.

 

This episode characterized Sharman (along with his raspy voice) as a bit more of an active participant in the whole process. But still fails to mention that when Sharman took over the Lakers in '72, he too was lauded for bringing in a free-flowing uptempo offense capitalizing on defense and turnovers.

(Sharman wanted the Lakers to emulate the prime period Russell Celtics by reducing Wilt's role to dominating the lane like Darth Vader and igniting the fast break with rocket outlet passes to West, Goodrich and Jim McMillan (inserted in the lineup in place of the encouraged-to-retire Elgin Baylor.) The Showtime Lakers used Kareem in much the same rebounding/outletting role and added the dimension of the 6-9 Magic grabbing rebounds and going coast-to-coast all by himself.)

Nobody in the world thought McKinney was the prime factor in the Trail Blazers winning the '77 title with "a bunch of nobodies."

Oh, and Jack Kent Cooke relentlessly pounded the concept of the "Fabulous Forum" from the day he bought the team in 1967, and movie stars, rock stars, etc etc, were regularly photographed at Lakers games. (The concept of lining them all up in the front rows was indeed a new idea.)

 

Earvin Johnson never had any teammate or classmate named "Londell Owens" at Michigan State.

Everybody in and around the MSU basketball program knew all about Earvin Johnson from his 7th-8th grade years in Lansing junior high, when he started going over to Jenison Field House and demolishing All-Big Ten players such as Mike Robinson and Terry Furlow in pickup games.

(If I had to guess as to the inspiration for "Londell Owens," I'd say Furlow, who was widely known as a screw loose hothead who hit guys with 2x4 boards in pickup games and was a well known passenger on the Toot Toot Express. Furlow was gone to the NBA a year before Magic arrived. He was one guy who was pretty notorious for not reacting well to getting smoked in pickup games by Magic.)

As soon as Magic signed with MSU in April 1977 everybody in the program knew he was running the show (as long as he elected to stay). They were going nowhere without him and everybody knew it. Any Spartan players who didn't like Magic Johnson were firmly encouraged to get the hell out.

I'm sure Cookie Kelly (later Johnson) heard plenty of snarky stories about Magic from people in and around Lansing, and certainly she was well aware of his tomcat reputation, but I doubt very much she got many poison pen stories from his hoops teammates.

 

It was Walton… and a bunch of nobodies, IIRC.