It's Showtime! The Winning Time dream team on capturing the Laker magic
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Growing up in New England in the 1980s, Adam McKay was a devoted NBA fan. Which meant, of course, that he was a Boston Celtics fan.
So how did a kid who spent the better part of his childhood in Worcester, Mass. — glued to the TV cheering for Larry Bird — end up doing the unthinkable by making a buzzy new HBO drama about his home team's greatest rivals, the Los Angeles Lakers?
Premiering March 6, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty chronicles the on- and off-court lives of the iconic Showtime Lakers. For McKay, it proved to be an irresistible story — after he'd re-examined some long-held loyalties.
"I was a hardcore Celtics fan," McKay tells EW. "I hated the Lakers in the '80s — they were the villains. It wasn't until later that I realized, no, the Celtics were the villains, and the Lakers were actually incredible; they changed the way basketball is played, the way it related to the culture, and the way celebrities were created out of the sport."
McKay's fellow Massachusetts native Michael Chiklis would disagree. But that's perhaps for the best, seeing as how Chiklis stars in Winning Time as Celtics icon Red Auerbach, the architect of nine championship teams — and chief antagonist of the Showtime-era Lakers.
"Did he really say that? How do the Celtics qualify as villains?!" says an appalled Chiklis, a still-loyal Boston sports fan. "For the Fantastic Four, we did an NBA tie-in commercial where the four of us played basketball against Magic Johnson. I'm on the court, in walks Magic, and I go, 'You motherf---er,' and he burst out laughing with that amazing smile of his and goes, 'That's right, you're a Boston guy.' The villain is the team that is your biggest rival and you hate; I think it's whoever makes you cry a lot when you're 7."
HBO Michael Chiklis in 'Winning Time'
During the 1980s, the Celtics and Lakers were responsible for a lot of tears on both coasts, coming from kids and adults alike. And while Los Angeles is currently the city of champions (a crown last held by Boston, coincidentally) — with recent titles for the Rams, Dodgers, and Lakers — the glitz, glamour, and winning tradition wasn't always there. Based on sportswriter Jeff Pearlman's book Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s, the HBO sports drama Winning Time chronicles the rise of a city and a true American dynasty, from the arrival of a colorful playboy team owner and the drafting of a future legend to the rivalry that saved the NBA.
"It involves not kings and queens, but celebrities, entrepreneurs, and visionaries who were changing culture," says showrunner Max Borenstein (writer of all four MonsterVerse films), a child of '80s L.A.
Only a story this star-studded could find such a deep and supremely talented roster. Among the recognizable names in the Winning Time cast are Chiklis, John C. Reilly, Jason Clarke, Gaby Hoffmann, Jason Segel, Adrien Brody, Rob Morgan, Tracy Letts, Gillian Jacobs, Wood Harris, Julianne Nicholson, and Sally Field. And that doesn't even include the actors playing noted Laker superfans Jack Nicholson and Richard Pryor. But the most important casting was put on the broad shoulders of a pair of unknowns tasked with portraying two of the most famous and unique athletes of all time: the ever-charismatic Earvin "Magic" Johnson and the always thoughtful Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
"It's hard to imagine a more difficult set of casting parameters than Magic Johnson — until you add Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to the mix," Borenstein admits.
For Magic, Borenstein knew they needed a combination of movie-star charisma and believable basketball ability, an almost impossible task. Thankfully, just as he and McKay started to worry they'd never find their guy, a magical videotape arrived.
"Being from Michigan, Magic was holy," says Quincy Isaiah, who hails from Muskegon, some 90 minutes from Lansing, where Johnson grew up and won a college national championship at Michigan State.
Isaiah moved to L.A. in 2017 and soon became so discouraged by the lack of acting work he was getting that he started considering joining the military. "I really wanted to do it, and I still kind of feel like, 'What if?'" he reveals. "But this is the way I wanted it to go; [Winning Time] showed up at the perfect time."
Borenstein and McKay may have been blown away by Isaiah's look and auditions, but he still had to pass the ultimate test. Fittingly, the man responsible for putting him through a workout was basketball-player-turned-actor Rick Fox, who started his NBA career with the Celtics before winning three titles as part of the Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal Laker dynasty of the early 2000s. "A few days ago Rick told me, 'I was trying to make you throw up. I wanted to see how bad you wanted it,'" Isaiah says with a laugh. "I guess he liked what he saw."
Warrick Page/HBO Quincy Isaiah in 'Winning Time'
The road to finding Winning Time's Kareem was even more unexpected, courtesy of a call from the casting team that Borenstein will never forget. "There's this guy, he's not really an actor, but he has an agent because he does public speaking. He has a doctorate in education policy, and he teaches at Stanford, but he also was a Globetrotter,'" he recalls being told. "I was like, 'Are you kidding me?!'"
They were not. Meet Solomon Hughes, a former college basketball player at the University of California, Berkeley who has a master's in education and a Ph.D. in higher education policy. It's the ideal résumé for someone attempting to capture the essence of Abdul-Jabbar, who despite being the NBA's all-time leading scorer might be better known for his work off the court.
"Of the many things that I really admire about Kareem is how he represents liberation," Hughes says of the now-distinguished writer. "He's not going to be boxed into one dimension. It wasn't playing a mountain of a man, it was playing a mountain range of a man because he's contributed to society in so many different ways. In my mind, as I was developing the character, one of the underlying things was staying curious and really representing a complete person who brings more than just their height and their physicality."
HBO Solomon Hughes in 'Winning Time'
Between them, Johnson and Abdul-Jabbar have nine MVP trophies, but the most valuable cast member might be the son of the Showtime Lakers' most underrated player. "One of my buddies sent me a breakdown of the script and was like, 'You should audition for your dad,'" recalls DeVaughn Nixon, who hopes to put a spotlight on the contributions of Magic and Kareem's teammates — namely his father, former Laker guard Norm Nixon. ("It's like the Jackson Five; Tito and Jermaine are Jacksons too," he jokes.)
Unlike his new teammates, the younger Nixon is a veteran of the acting game, with credits that go all the way back to 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day and 1992's The Bodyguard. "Initially I thought this was on Showtime, because it was supposed to be called Showtime," he recalls. "And I was like, 'Oh, Showtime on Showtime, that's gonna catch on!' And then my manager was like, 'No, it's HBO.' I was like, 'Well, cool, even better.'"
But before he could play the role you'd assume he was born for, Nixon faced some competition who could say the same thing: "I had to audition against my brother [Norman Nixon Jr.]. So if either one of us didn't get it, I would've been like, 'Oh, come on guys.'"
Nixon's inside knowledge was a huge asset, and yet there's another Winning Time baller with an unmatched history you might not expect — especially since he's staying on the sidelines as revolutionary Laker coach Paul Westhead.
"It was a little L.A. boy's dream come true to be a part of this," says Jason Segel, who before starring on How I Met Your Mother and in Judd Apatow's big-screen comedies was a two-time California high school state champion, backing up two future NBA players and earning the nickname Dr. Dunk. "I think I'm now Dr. Take It Easy," Segel says, laughing. "I'm 42, so I was dunking 25 pounds ago. For the show, the crowds were filled because we were playing in fake arenas, and I never would touch the basketball, and then one time the ball got thrown to me — I was terrified. I was at the three-point line, I shot, it went in, the crowd cheered, and I said, 'I am never shooting on this f---ing set ever again.'"
No doubt about it, the Winning Time set was loaded with talent — a true dream team. But every championship squad has a star player ready to take the game-winning shot. For this ensemble, it was frequent McKay collaborator John C. Reilly, The Oscar-nominated actor plays the late, great Lakers owner Jerry Buss, a chemist from Wyoming who hit it big in L.A. real estate. He may be best summed up, though, by this line from the pilot: "There are two things in this world that make me believe in God: sex and basketball." Fellow Oscar nominee Michael Shannon originally was cast in the role, but he departed the project over creative differences. Reilly got the call from McKay just seven days before filming on the pilot began in late 2019.
"We've had so much fun and success together that I knew it was an offer I could not refuse," Reilly says of his Step Brothers and Talladega Nights director. "Then as soon as I read the script, I really connected to Jerry Buss. There's a lot about him that is very similar to the way I think and operate in the world. I come from a working-class family in the South Side of Chicago, I don't live in Hollywood, I don't view myself as a celebrity, and I always have a bit of a chip on my shoulder. People underestimate you when you come from a different background, like Jerry and I both did. I've said before, 'The road behind me is littered with people that have underestimated me.' So I just felt like, 'I can't believe this fell into my lap — I better get ready.' In a weird way, not having any preparation time really was a blessing, because then I just had to attack it with pure instinct. Luckily I was able to look like him pretty quickly, and then I just threw everything I had at it. I tried to embrace this guy and love the guy, and, man, by the time we finished this, I have such enormous respect and admiration for Jerry Buss and what he did with his life."
Warrick Page/HBO John C. Reilly and Quincy Isaiah in 'Winning Time'
McKay believes the requirements for the "difficult role" of the larger-than-life Buss, whom he compares to Willy Wonka, made for a short list of qualified actors. McKay even passed over one very famous movie star, a decision that had a personal and professional cost. He revealed last year that casting Reilly over their longtime friend Will Ferrell proved to be the last straw in the relationship between McKay and Ferrell, who were partners in Gary Sanchez Productions and had made hit comedy films and series including Eastbound & Down and Succession.
"It happened during a tricky period, because Will and I had already split up the company and moved on," McKay says of not giving Ferrell a heads-up about Reilly landing the gig. "And it's never fun when you split up a company, so we weren't exactly seeing each other every day, or on the greatest of terms. So yeah, I got caught in kind of a gray area there, where once we realized we wanted John, I wasn't really speaking a lot to Will. I knew it was a little dicey, but I was like, 'Well, we split up, and John's the right guy for it.' And I've said this before, looking back on it, even though it was tricky and dicey, and even though we had split up, I still wish I had called him. I think that probably would've made it still not great, but would've made it okay. I've apologized — both to him and publicly — and at this point, that's kind of all I can do."
Stuck in the middle, Reilly doesn't have much to add to the discussion: "Will is one of my closest friends. Adam is one of my closest friends. And I was very grateful to get this job."
Grateful seems to be a feeling shared by everyone involved. Transparent and Girls alum Gaby Hoffmann says she was overjoyed by her experience portraying Claire Rothman, "the lone woman in a real boys' club," who ran the behind-the-scenes show as former general manager and vice president of the Forum, which she helped transform from a regular basketball arena into Hollywood's hottest club. But even Hoffmann often struggled to wrap her head around how Winning Time's many, many pieces — from the large cast to the characters' even larger personalities — would come together in a satisfying way.
"I definitely had moments of, 'How the f--- are they going to fit this all in, in a way that works and allows space and entry for the audience?'" she says of the project. (Even McKay calls it the "most visually challenging" of his career.) Hoffmann continues: "It seemed like an impossible feat. Having now seen the first few episodes, there's a rhythm and a pace to this thing with these wild styles that Adam's using that really works. It's fresh, exciting, fast-paced, and somehow does all fit together. I don't know if I've seen this before. There's so many elements of it that feel familiar, but altogether it does feel kind of like a new language."
HBO John C. Reilly, Gaby Hoffmann, and Hadley Robinson in 'Winning Time'
They hope, like basketball, it's a language that needs no translation. While people like McKay, Borenstein, Segel, and Chiklis had front-row seats to the '80s Lakers and Celtics, Jason Clarke was on the other side of the globe. But the Australian actor credits Johnson and his Celtic frenemy Larry Bird (played in Winning Time by Sean Patrick Small, who replaced Bo Burnham) for expanding the reach of the game to him and so many others.
"Basketball is one of America's great gifts to the world," says Clarke (Terminator: Genisys, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes), who transforms into the NBA logo himself, Jerry West. "When you see cricket in India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh, and soccer in Brazil, Argentina, or Europe, you see everybody playing it because it's easy and accessible. All you got to have is the want to do it. And basketball is that American sport to the whole world; everyone's playing it everywhere now. I got an email from a friend in Lithuania, like, 'My God, you're playing Jerry West?!'"
But Segel promises that even basketball-agnostic viewers should look at Winning Time as a slam-dunk Sunday-night viewing option. "I think Boogie Nights is a really good comparison," he says of Paul Thomas Anderson's revered 1997 film about the porn industry, which also happens to star Reilly.
"You don't love Boogie Nights because you love porn, you love Boogie Nights because you love the era," he says. "[Winning Time] has this amazing mix of comedy and drama, along with the fun of the era, the costumes, and kind of the freedom that was happening at that time — and then there's the basketball element. Honestly, it's exciting to be a part of something that you feel like people are going to watch. You take projects for all sorts of different reasons, and I was really excited about the cast, and I loved the scripts, and then I saw the episodes and you get this added bonus of like, 'Oh s---, people are going to love this.' If you love basketball, it's the show for you. If you love that era, it's the show for you. And if you love really strong acting, it's the show for you. It's got it all."
Unlikely to be tuning in will be those portrayed on screen — well, except for Norm Nixon, who looks forward to watching with his son. ("Just don't make me look silly," DeVaughn says his father told him.) Abdul-Jabbar, Johnson, and Buss' daughter Jeanie Buss (the Lakers' current controlling owner, played here by Hadley Robinson) have all voiced their lack of interest in this dramatic retelling of their lives. With the principal subjects distancing themselves, those involved are left wondering what the reaction will be or insisting they haven't thought about it. For his part, McKay is choosing to be optimistic that everyone will give it a chance — and that he won't be blackballed from taking in a game courtside.
"We know that a bunch of them are not happy," he acknowledges. "For the first half of the [show's run], I don't think I'm going to be able to get Laker tickets. But I do hope they all hang in there with the show because we really are trying to respectfully tell their story. Especially for a guy like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who's one of my idols.
"But hopefully by the end, I would go and Ms. Buss would come by and say hi. Maybe that's me being delusional. So I guess the short answer is, it will be harder to get tickets," he says with a laugh.
And he may have to worry about getting the same foul treatment in Boston. Even as Winning Time is set to debut, Chiklis is still miffed about McKay's breach of fandom.
"I'm seriously concerned about McKay saying the Celtics are villains," the actor reiterates. "I texted him this morning to congratulate him on all the [Don't Look Up Oscar nominations]; I'll let him enjoy himself today, but then I'm going to give him some serious s---."
Game on.
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