It’s as much about basketball as it is about the city the Lakers call their home.
In the pilot for HBO ’s new seriesWinning Time : The advance of the Lakers Dynasty , Magic Johnson ( Quincy Isaiah ) come to Los Angeles where Jerry Buss ( John C. Reilly ) tries to wine-coloured and dine him . But Buss is n’t just pitching him on the idea of the Lakers . He ’s pitching him on the idea of Los Angeles . They eat burgers and child under the atomic number 10 visible light of Jim ’s Burgers in Boyle Heights , a casual outing flex into something out of a movie because of the drama of the cable car cultivation and the signage . Jerry then lets Johnson drive his car to Santa Monica . There , they go to The Horn , a golf club on Wilshire that no longer exists but was once a thriving hotspot where Buss was a regular . Magic is starstruck . Diana Ross is there .
For as much asWinning Time — the series create by Max Borenstein and Jim Hecht , which boast Adam McKay as an executive producer — is about basketball game , it ’s also about the Lakers ' rendering of Los Angeles , the dreamy glittering aspiration of the metropolis that has tempt so many people time and time again . In some direction , the show itself somehow feels like Los Angeles : It can be vast in scope and overwhelming . Sometimes watching it feels like listening to someone who just snort a huge amount of cocain . It ’s occasionally squalid , and borders , in some moment , on victimization . If you bail you ca n’t really be faulted . You ’re just the ingenue who pack her bags and got on a busbar back home .
If there ’s an underlying thesis toWinning Time , it ’s that Jerry Buss , embodied by Reilly as a mirthful horndog with a combover , reimagined the Lakers in the image of Los Angeles — flashy and famous person - obsessed . On screen , introduced walking out of the Playboy Mansion the dayspring after what was presumably an debauch , pitching his idea for the franchise . He want basketball to palpate like a night at the Mansion . There will be fervour and celebrities and boobs , the latter of which will come in the form of the halftime amusement , the dancer that would eventually become known as the Laker Girls .
HBO
In literal life-time , the said locale known as The Horn was probably even more inspiring to Buss than the Playboy Mansion . That ’s how Buss came up with the term that would come to specify his team : Showtime . The Horn was a place that attracted , in the Word of God of twoLos Angeles Timeswriters , a"hip Westside set . “It was a venuewhere musicianscould be discovered in an intimate elbow room occupied by bigwig like Buss , whose concern was then in real the three estates . According to Jim Pearlman , who wrote the book on whichWinning Timeis based , before the big act would take the leg at The Horn , one performing artist , induct at a tabular array , would stand up up and talk the Logos " showtime " before being joined by a refrain .
It ’s all a particular sort of Los Angeles bullshit — the opinion that everything should be flashy and that everyone should be a star . Except in this case : It in reality worked , even though , as the show goes out of its agency to emphasize , it was progress on a house of cards . Buss talked a big game but did n’t have the financial standing to back up his leverage .
Los Angeles is , of course , far more than the vast Bel Air mansion where the audience see Kareem Abdul - Jabbar ( Solomon Hughes ) meditating and contemplating his place in a white piece ’s enterprise . It ’s alsoInglewood , where the Lakers ' place The Forum is located . win Timeisn’t all that interested in explore the bleak community just outside of the red door of the locale that Buss want to turn into a haven for famous people who can sit on the pursuit . WheneverWinning Timeshowcases these recognisable mugs it ’s a bit awkward , like they were puppeted in from a wax museum . There ’s Jack Nicholson ( Max E. Williams ) sending over a feeding bottle of champagne to Buss as he tries to romance Great Western ; a fresh - faced Paula Abdul ( Carina Conti ) is recruit to choreograph the Laker Girls ' aphrodisiacal dances .
HBO
People from Los Angeles know that it ’s image - centrical reputation is often shoddy , but that ’s also what pose tail in seats and sells plane just the ticket . win Timeis perhaps not a great LA show because it does n’t capture the complicated recession of the city that do n’t bet like the Hollywood ideal , but it ’s a majuscule showaboutLA because it dials into the mentality that it study to make it in that town .
