‘Winning Time: The Rise Of The Lakers Dynasty’ Review: HBO’s Throwback Series Is Charismatic But Not As Slick In Season 2

Co-creators Max Borenstein and Jim Hecht’s “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” was a delight for basketball fans in Season 1, a rare look at a specific sports era that’s not part of a “30 for 30” ESPN documentary nor in a two-hour movie. And because the series was about as precious with historical details as it was keeping a consistent visual style—that is, not so much—we got to have fun imaging how legends like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Solomon Hughes) and Earvin “Magic” Johnson (Quincy Isaiah) would have butt heads in the locker room. Or, in the case of John C. Reilly’s Jerry Buss, the enigmatic entrepreneur with La La Land’s bright lights burned into his sunglasses, we got to see how a basketball franchise could be built in a way more humanizing and funky than a regular biopic. 

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That excitement of spending more time with such a special era of sports history is sporadically evident in this second season, which takes on the Lakers’ rise and fall after the 1980s NBA Finals, up through 1984. Now, the purple and gold team has to recreate that magic, while also dealing with the growing ego and power given to their golden goose, Magic. In this second season, “Winning Time” goes back into the weeds of franchise power moves, coaching drama, and locker room family business. Much of what happens here is surprisingly true, but it doesn’t feel as compellingly outrageous as it used to.

The ensemble remains just as solid, including the performers who bring NBA legends back to the small screen with a much more nuanced light. Isaiah is a particular standout as Magic, depicting a growing ego that monopolizes the balance of the team, especially when he is offered a historic deal that insults his teammates like Norm Nixon (DeVaughn Nixon) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. It’s crucial that Isaiah keeps Magic as such a compelling character, a smiling anti-hero who is learning on private and public stages about how his selfish decisions can harm others.

In between games, the series has previously emphasized the inner turmoil of the Lakers’ coaching leaders, like Adrien Brody’s Pat Riley or Tracy Letts’ Jack McKinney. One of the standout performances comes from Jason Segel, whose character, Paul Westhead, has risen in the story from assistant coach to now being its head coach. In trying to repeat the Lakers’ magic, his history-spouting, Victor Frankl-quoting leader faces the challenge of Magic’s growing value to the franchise, which overshadows his strategizing and his own sense of this basketball family. He even has a plan called “The System” that he demands everyone stick to, and its success and failure indicate how he has either mastered the game or over-intellectualized it, to the team’s detriment. Along with his work on Apple TV+’s “Shrinking,” Segel continues to show how he can uniquely illuminate the warmer qualities of a polarizing underdog. 

The entire cast of “Winning Time” is still resoundingly strong, and they bring a vital degree of charisma to a story that has stopped trying to be as funny as in Season 1 and is getting more serious about the business. Yes, some of them get to have goofy asides, breaking the fourth wall just for the sake of it. But there is a notable lack of gaudy grandeur as with Season 1. In turn, large passages of this season can be dry as a drama, comedy, or game-time reenactment, relying on its grainy shot-on-film style to give it the most edge.

This season attempts to offer a new set of stakes with the lingering threat of the Celtics’ pride, Larry Bird (Sean Patrick Small)—it even begins with the Lakers being chased out of Boston after a big upset. But this is also where the show’s timeline becomes a bit goofy, as we can only see so much of him to stay current to its anticipation (and then depiction of) the 1981 season. “Winning Time” does put a solid effort into demystifying Larry Bird—as it did for Magic in Season 1—by showing him as a young Indiana man who almost didn’t become a superstar and embraced Boston in part for its working-class fanbase. But it’s one example of a series arc that runs limp before it can take off, and it’s almost as if they tease Bird’s presence in the story just so we don’t lose too much faith in its more relaxed mode. 

The Lakers dynasty, as depicted here, is a giant family. “Winning Time” highlights this with a weak plotline that emphasizes Jerry Buss’ biological family, in which his children, Johnny (Thomas Mann), Jimmy (McCabe Slye), and Jeanie (Hadley Robinson), are brought closer to Jerry (he gets them sports franchises to take care of themselves). As the greatest time-suck of this series, the contention that emerges between these three siblings and their patriarch won’t make the writers at “The Righteous Gemstones” sweat. And Buss’ story gains only a little heart from including Ari Graynor as Honey, someone the Lakers impresario is trying to reconnect with. But the show can’t shake how Buss has become more of a gratuitous character than the exciting anchor he was in Season 1. 

“Winning Time” has figured out its type of formula in telling an easygoing sports saga in great detail without any dryness. But it’s more that the show can minimize itself to an ornate novelty that can, at best, repeat what worked in the first season. It’s still fun to watch—especially with striking direction by the likes of Tanya Hamilton and Trey Edward Shults—but “Winning Time” can’t quite repeat the fresh success in its second season. It’s as breezy and proud as a victory lap, which is only so engaging. [B-]

Season 2 of “Winning Time” debuts on HBO on August 6.