For HBO, the Los Angeles Lakers’ decades-long dynasty was never really like that. The premium cabler said Sunday that “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” has been canceled after two seasons – with only one of the team’s five NBA titles from the 1980s appearing on screen.
In an exit interview with Vulture, Winning Time EP Kevin Messick said producers never gave a time frame for how long the series would run, saying, “I think we always did it season by season. Before the [WGA] When the strike happened, we had just started talking about what would have happened in Season 3, but all of that was cut and canceled.”
Season 2 would end with the Lakers’ bitter loss to arch-rival Boston Celtics in the 1984 NBA Finals. This version was sent out to critics early in the season, but the streamlined version that aired featured Lakers owner Jerry Buss (John C. Reilly) and his daughter and future team owner Jeanie Buss (Hadley Robinson) on the Forum logo to celebrate the better times. A montage about the later fates of the main actors followed.
That final assembly “could have run at the end of any season,” Messick said. “But it works no matter how long we have to write the story, because the success and achievements of each of our characters are true no matter what year it airs.”
He added: “All I can say is that I don’t think there was a magic number of seasons, but if you read Jeff Pearlman’s book and the subsequent books he wrote about the Lakers, there are definitely more stories to tell.” .”
The Lakers won the NBA title in 1985 and back-to-back seasons in 1987 and 1988.
The series featured exquisitely rendered period-specific production design and starred DeVaughn Nixon, Delante Desouza, Jimel Atkins and Quincy Isaiah as players, Jason Clarke as GM Jerry West, Adrien Brody as coach Pat Riley, and Jason Segel as hapless coach Paul Westhead .