1979. Jerry Buss, a cheeky American businessman, who spends his nights at the Playboy Mansion, realizes his dream: to buy a basketball team. He doesn’t have the money but finds it. And transforms this sport – which at the time had a low television audience – into show business, by hiring a promising young university player from Michigan, Magic Johnson.
Winning Time, the new series from the producer of Don’t Look Up, Adam McKay, recounts in a fearless, punchy and irreverent way how thanks to the Lakers and Magic Johnson, basketball became sexy, mixing the glamor of Hollywood and the technicality of the sport. That’s what was interesting. Adam McKay: “What’s so amazing about Magic is that we know his smile, his incredible creativity, but he was a winner.”
“What’s so exciting about this story is that you really saw this style at Magic – which people would have previously looked upon with suspicion – become the dominant style in the NBA.”
The series, sexy as hell, finds the grain of the film of the 80s, the false archives alongside the real ones, on a background of funky music. And the actors spend their time commenting on their actions, facing the camera. A choice of screenwriter Max Borenstein :
“We were trying to have fun first and foremost, but it’s a show about showmanship. You know, that’s when sports became entertainment. The Lakers, Jerry Buss, that was his vision, and so you had to find the most spectacular way to take the audience on this journey. That was the reason.”
The series tells how the impetuous boss, Jerry Buss, breaks the codes of basketball, integrates cheerleaders. A successful series too, due to the two actors who play Johnson, and his friend, more politically engaged, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played by Salomon Hughes : “There was the acting component, and then there was the physical component of trying to become the silhouette of these giants.”
Magic Johnson, who is preparing his own series on his story, did not watch Winning Time. But this series, whose broadcast begins on OCS, is simply fun, exciting and funny.