Magic moments
A new drama charts the1980s heyday of MAGIC JOHNSON and the LA Lakers
‘Jerry, the Lakers and Magic turned basketball into entertainment’
JOHN C REILLY
NEW DRAMA
Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty
Mon & Tue, 9pm &10.05pm, Sky Atlantic (box set, SKY/NOW)
WHEN US BASKETBALL team LA Lakers signed college player Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson in 1979, they had won one National Championship in their 32-year history. But their fortunes were about to change…
Spearheaded by their new recruit, the Lakers dominated the NBA in the 1980s, winning five championships, while Johnson would become one of the sport’s biggest stars.
The story behind that remarkable period, which was dubbed the ‘Showtime’ era because of the Lakers’ thrilling offensive play, is told in Sky Atlantic’s new series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, executive produced by Adam Mckay.
BIG BUSINESS
The unlikely man behind the Lakers’ success story was Jerry Buss, a former chemist who’d made a fortune in the property business.
‘The financial story of Jerry Buss alone is an incredible one,’ says John C Reilly, who plays him. ‘The way that he leveraged what he had, to get to the next place he wanted to be in his life… Among other things, he traded the Chrysler Building in Manhattan for the Lakers!’
In the late 1970s, basketball was in the doldrums, with the league on the verge of bankruptcy, but Buss was a natural showman and had a vision that the sport could become an entertainment spectacle.
‘One of the fascinating things people are going to realise when they watch this series is what basketball was before 1979, and what it was after,’ says Reilly, who heads a stellar cast that includes Sally Field as Buss’ mother Jessie, Jason Clarke as irascible Lakers coach Jerry West, and Adrien
Brody as West’s successor, Pat Riley.
‘This thing we have now in modern basketball – showmanship and theatricality – it didn’t exist before 1979. Jerry, the Lakers and Magic turned it into entertainment, and it became almost like our bread and circuses at the Colosseum.’
GAME CHANGER
The Lakers already had the 7ft 2in Kareem Abdul-jabbar (played by Solomon Hughes), the league’s five-time Most Valuable Player during the 1970s, on their books when Buss arrived on the scene.
But it was the acquisition of the charismatic Johnson (Quincy Isaiah) that would help transform the fortunes of the team. ‘If you know how hard it is to be a professional basketball player, you understand why most of them are serious all the time, and don’t even acknowledge the crowd,’ says Reilly. ‘But even though he was a fierce competitor, Magic had this superpower to be able to connect with you as a human in the crowd.’
The achievements of Johnson, who retired in 1991 after contracting HIV, are all the more remarkable against the backdrop of race relations at a time when the NBA’S lack of popularity was attributed by some to the fact that it was ‘too black’.
‘Magic was a transformative person in America,’ says Reilly, 56. ‘In 1979, there was a lot of very intense racial politics going on, and there was good reason to be a more serious person publicly if you were an African-american. But Magic decided that he was going to spread a message of inclusion.’
Similarly, Buss had an irrepressible brand of optimism that, says Reilly, made him an enjoyable character to play.
‘One of the reasons I loved playing this character is because I believe that we should be saying to people in the world:
“You can do it, anything is possible,”’ he says.
‘Jerry’s attitude was:
“If you can think it, and you’re willing to try, you can do it.”
What he pulled off, with the help of his amazing team of people, was nothing short of a miracle. And it’s empowering to say miracles are possible for anybody, if you believe in yourself.’