Showtime and Shambles
Russell Westbrook head fakes and takes two darting steps to his left, setting himself up for a midrange jumper at the perfect angle for banking the ball off the glass. He lets it fly. It flies all right, slamming off the glass into his opponent’s waiting hands.
This sight is woefully common for Lakers fans this year and is also a part of numerous Westbrick Fail Compilations like this one, made for those who are gleefully watching this monumental collapse of a season. Westbrook has borne the brunt of the ridicule, and is suffering through an historically bad season while raking in the fourth largest salary in the NBA.
Obviously, missing the immensely talented but often injured Anthony Davis has absolutely killed the Lakers. But these Lakers, whose roster includes four players on the recently released top 75 players of all time list, seem to be devoid of direction or fight.
Coincidentally, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty debuted a couple of weeks ago amid a particularly dark period. Since the All-Star break the Lakers have lost nine games and won only two, and both of those required Herculean 50 point games from LeBron James, who often looks like an angry stepdad who inherited a bench full of brats who can’t ball for shit.
The Laker Mystique, cultivated by Dr. Jerry Buss, is still strong and ubiquitous as ever. The proof is in all the attention – countless articles, podcasts, hot takes from basic cable windbags – for a team that is currently 11 games south of .500.
Buss bought the Lakers in 1979 and won a championship in 1980. He created a glamour and sexiness (we can’t talk about the Showtime Lakers without lots of sex and sexiness, if the first two episodes of Winning Time tell us anything) absent in the woefully unpopular NBA of the late 70s.
It’s really too bad the current Lakers couldn’t make personnel decisions half as well as the producers of WT. John C. Reilly slips on that leisure suit, buttons his shirt just north of the navel and is Jerry Buss, a wild-eyed, scotch-guzzling optimist/hedonist who doesn’t mind going into the red to buy a championship.
Speaking of Red, Michael Chiklis is also perfect as the villain In legendary Boston Celtics owner Red Auerbach. One of the best scenes so far is a toe-to-toe shit-talking showdown between Buss and Red at center court in an empty Forum.
That showdown probably didn’t happen. As well as many other instances trumped up via poetic license by Adam McKay, who persists in getting in his own way with unnecessary titles and somewhat irksome direct addresses to the camera by a growing number of characters. Adam McKay, I really like a lot of your stuff, but enough with the characters talking to the camera. Let them talk to each other. It works out much better.
There has already been much made of the portrayal of Jerry West – a desperately angry, restless and unhappy man prone to throwing his trophies through windows. Jerry West is by his own admission a restless and unhappy man, though I don’t doubt that some of the criticism of his portrayal as an elongated Yosemite Sam is valid. It makes for fun TV, though.
West was (and is) also incredibly smart and smart enough to realize he belonged behind the scenes. He had a huge hand in the 5 championships won in that era. He and the Lakers had a falling out, and now he is a consultant for the LA Clippers, doubtlessly enjoying the collapse of the team that betrayed him.
For me, the Lakers of the 80s will always occupy a huge soft spot in my heart. Watching The NBA on CBS, Brent Musburger and Magic running the break with my dad on a TV that weighed 50 pounds and got hot to the touch are happy childhood memories. Winning Time employs a variety of film stocks and ancient video formats to achieve a hazy nostalgia and like the Showtime Lakers, it keeps running and gunning without ever stopping to catch its breath.
The all-too-real Lakers provide ample drama nightly – testy press conferences and James Worthy’s post game lamentations are all part of what ESPN’s Brian Windhorst described as “an absence of joy” regarding everything purple and gold this year.
Hubris and excess are Buss’s legacy – the old Lakers built a dynasty on them and the current ones are slogging through the most disappointing season ever because of them.
I’m looking forward in equal parts to seeing how the seasons of the fictionalized Lakers of the salad days and the struggling ones of present play out. The end results are history and a forgone conclusion, respectively. But the ride should be a lot of fun.
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