John C. Reilly as Jerry Bass, bottle in hand, lies on the Forum’s table. Image: HBO
For Americans, especially African Americans, 1991 was a hell of a year.
Recall: Rodney King was severely beaten by a gang of white police thugs. Operation Desert Storm began with US airstrikes in Iraq. Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested after the remains of eleven men and boys, mostly African American, were found in his apartment. Anita Hill, an African American, alleged that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, a black man, sexually harassed her while working for him.
And to top it all off, Los Angeles Lakers point guard Magic Johnson announced that he had contracted HIV, ending his storied career.
And while HBO’s “Victory Time” pilot “The Swan,” which premiered on Sunday, begins in that faithful year—showing Magic and a weeping Lakers aide receiving tragic medical news—thankfully, the episode is mostly set earlier, in 1979. year. And in 1979, change is coming. Changing views on the NBA. How the black stars celebrated. And how America’s racial issue will be televised under the bright lights of the NBA.
Created as entertainment by Max Borenstein and Jim Hecht, Winning Time challenges the perception of how our most iconic NBA epic stories came to be. The series is based on multiple sources, as nearly everyone from the Showtime Lakers era wrote a book or two. But it’s mostly taken from sports reporter and Deadspin author Jeff Perlman’s book Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, And The Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty Of The 1980s. Combining all of these varied interests and subjective truths, Winning Time reveals a story about race, gender, greed and class just like it does about basketball. Sounds like the perfect story for Adam McKay to direct the pilot episode.
At the heart of this epic are two pillars: Jerry Bass, played by John C. Reilly with the charm of a con artist, and Magic, played by newcomer Quincy Isaiah. Each of them played an important role in what the Lakers would become. Under Buss’ leadership, the Lakers and eventually the NBA became an important pop culture era. Buss integrated sex and Hollywood into sports, and Ervin “Magic” Johnson became his avatar in all things extravagant. On the court, the Magic will dominate every player, including his teammates, with one exception – his binary opponent Larry Bird. The contrast in how Bird and Magic have played is reflected in how the media has dealt with each.
Off the court, all of Magic’s charisma and skill brought attention to every sin his Seventh-day Adventist mother had warned him about. This excess would lead to the situation in which Magic finds himself in the series’ opening scene: in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, gazing at the supposedly intact marriage of the next big NBA star, Michael Jordan. But before dark in 1991, the Magic has a lifetime of life, on and off the court.
Part of this life was his work, he played basketball better than anyone else on the planet. The league the Magic entered was rife with drug addiction, low ratings, and apparently too many black faces and names for white advertisers and fans who didn’t care. The association had yet to reckon with its racism. Bass, never afraid of gambling, bought low to sell high. And once he drafted the Magic with the first overall pick in ’79, he had a real article that sold itself.
Lakers owner Jerry Buss (John S. Reilly) introduces Magic Johnson (Quincy Isaiah) to Hollywood. Image: HBO
Bass is portrayed as a male child looking for a cross between meaning in life and an enrichment scheme. He’s kind of a perverted poet. Bass was a perpetual bachelor who enjoyed orgies as much as he did philosophical basketball, being what Roland Barthes called the perfect bastard, a spectacle of excess. Bass considered basketball stars to be gods. And he intended to convince the fans to buy and suspend the faith for at least four blocks.
The pilot follows Magic as he sails through rough, drafty waters like eating exotic fish with old white people who call him a boy. He also hangs out at cocaine parties hosted by SOB and future Clippers owner Donald Sterling. But most importantly, he meets his teammates, including current Lakers point guard and All-Star Norm Nixon, whom he takes on in a one-on-one game at Sterling’s house while Nixon wears a mink coat and taunts Magic’s modesty. Michigan roots. After defeating Magic, he leaves, but not before looking at Magic with wide eyes and calling him “boy”.
This is followed by a montage of young Magic and his father, Ervin Sr., played by hunky Rob Morgan, driving around in the older man’s garbage truck in Lansing. It’s a poignant and poetic reminder of what Magic is trying to run from. He strips away the layers of charm and façade that oozes a young dotted god to reveal a boy who is just trying to do better than his father. “I don’t want to be the tallest scavenger in Lansing,” the son tells his father. Just like the young Jeannie Bass, who would become the current owner of the Lakers, who wants to not only impress her father, but also become his best version by being his female version.
The show’s sepia-tinged colors and old-school aesthetic pair oddly with breaking the fourth wall and manual zoom, two penchants for anything that has McKay’s name on it. After just one episode, it’s hard to tell if it’s working or not, but it’s a hallucinogenic feeling. The entire episode is reminiscent of an ode to the surreal comedy 8 ½. Fellini’s masterpiece also tells the story of a middle-aged man who is trying to find a muse for his work. For Bass, his “ideal woman” turns basketball into a mixture of brilliance and “fake it ’til you make it” panache. As Bass describes basketball in his preface: “It’s sexy!” By the end of the episode, when Magic comes to Bass’s office to talk about his doubts about making it into the league, Bass wisely lets the mystical halls and shiny floor of the Forum speak for itself.
Near the end of the episode, when Magic stands in the middle of the Forum and looks up at the rafters, he’s not only looking to his own future, but to the future of the NBA.