Kareem Abdul-Jabbar playing for the Lakers.Photo: Dick Raphael/NBAE via Getty
There’s at least one person from the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers who isn’t a fan of HBO’s new miniseries about the team —Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
The 75-year-old NBA Hall of Famer published a lengthy post to hisSubstackTuesday that revealed his criticism ofWinning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, which follows what happened afterMagic Johnsonjoined forces with him four decades ago in L.A.
While Abdul-Jabbar lists a number of complaints about the show, he says his main issue is that it commits the “sin of being boring.”
“There is only one immutable sin in writing: Don’t Be Boring!Winning Timecommits that sin over and over,” wrote Abdul-Jabbar, who won five of his six NBA championships with the Lakers.
“The characters are crude stick-figure representations that resemble real people the way Lego [Han] Solo resemblesHarrison Ford,” he continued. “Each character is reduced to a single bold trait as if the writers were afraid anything more complex would tax the viewers' comprehension.”
Like Johnson himself, Abdul-Jabbar said that he initially had no interest in watching the series because he lived through the events himself, but he felt compelled to tune in after hearing about how some of his former teammates were depicted.
“It’s a shame the way they treat Jerry West, who has openly discussed his struggle with mental health, especially depression,” Abdul-Jabbar wrote in his blog post.
“Instead of exploring his issues with compassion as a way to better understand the man, they turn him into a Wile E. Coyote cartoon to be laughed at,” he continued. “He never broke golf clubs, he didn’t throw his trophy through the window. Sure, those actions make dramatic moments, but they reek of facile exploitation of the man rather than exploration of character.”
Finally, Abdul-Jabbar said the show did not capture what he thinks is the true story of the “Showtime” Lakers: how a group of young men came together, despite their personal issues, to become one of the best NBA teams ever.
“Yeah, there’s an amazing, compelling, culturally insightful story in there,” he wrote. “Winning Timejust ain’t that story.”
Read Abdul-Jabbar’sentire poston Substack.
source: people.com
