“Winning Time” Production Designer Richard Toyon on Capturing the Lakers Highs & Lows in Season 2
A Los Angeles native and longtime Lakers fan, production designer Richard Toyon had a good idea of how the HBO series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty should look. After all, he was there when it originally happened. Opening in 1979, season 1 saw Jerry Buss (John C. Reilly) buying the Lakers and ...
“Winning Time” Costume Designer Emma Potter on Bringing Magic and Larry Bird Into the 1980s
In all their gold and purple splendor, the Lakers are back for a second season of HBO’s Winning Time, which tracks the rise of the team’s path to glory during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The show’s first season focused on Magic Johnson’s (Quincy Isaiah) rookie season and the team’s unlikely title win. This ...
It’s Magic vs. Larry in “Winning Time” Season 2 Teaser
“My friends, the future of sports is purple and gold.” This is how Lakers owner Jerry Buss (John C. Reilly) greets us in the opening seconds of Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty‘s season 2 teaser, but there’s another team from the other side of the country that would suggest the future of sports ...
Best of 2022: “Winning Time” Writer Rodney Barnes on Scripting HBO’s Fast-Breaking Lakers Series
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list. It’s pretty much a slam dunk that Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty will appeal to basketball fans. After all, it tells the story of one of the most pivotal moments in ...
“Winning Time” Cinematographer Todd Banhazl on Capturing the Flow State
Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty sounded, on paper, like a no-brainer for HBO. Based on Jeff Pearlman’s book “Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s,” the source material had every ingredient you’d want for a prestige series. It had larger-than-life figures in Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul Jabbar ...
“Winning Time” Showrunner Max Borenstein on Crafting an American Epic
Before Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty showrunner Max Borenstein sat down to write the show’s pilot episode, executive producer Adam McKay gave him one simple note: “Have fun with it.” Crammed with boisterous performances, Winning Time (its season finale aired this past Sunday, May 8, and is now renewed by HBO for ...
“Winning Time” Scores a Second Season With HBO
When we spoke with Winning Time co-creator, writer, and executive producer Jim Hecht, he said he and his fellow writers were already at work on season two. Well, it seems like Hecht and the Winning Time team got out on a fast break a few steps ahead. HBO has officially renewed Winning Time for a season second, which will pick ...
“Winning Time” Co-Creator Jim Hecht on His Love Letter to the Lakers
Jim Hecht‘s road to co-creating Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers began in 2014. Hecht was, by his own admission, at a low point, and he was looking for a project that really spoke to him. During his daily meditation, which he admitted with the qualifier “this sounds very LA,” he had a thought: “You gotta ...
“Winning Time” Costume Designer Emma Potter on Making Magic With the Lakers
Working on Max Borenstein and Jim Hecht’s Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty didn’t require an advanced degree in NBA fandom in general and Lakes lore specifically, yet a lot of the folks involved had both. Hecht himself is a lifelong Lakers fan, and writer Rodney Barnes has loved basketball his whole life, ...
“Winning Time” Writer Rodney Barnes on Scripting HBO’s Fast-Breaking Lakers Series
It’s pretty much a slam dunk that Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty will appeal to basketball fans. After all, it tells the story of one of the most pivotal moments in NBA history and features some of the game’s most notable figures — Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jerry West, and Pat Riley. ...
“Winning Time” Trailer Reveals Adam McKay’s Lakers Series for HBO Max
The dominant Chicago Bulls of the Michael Jordan era got a proper deep-dive docu-series, The Last Dance, on Netflix that was, for many of us, a salve during those dark, early days of the pandemic. It seems only fitting that the Los Angeles Lakers of the Magic Johnson era now have their own series, and it ...
