After its first season’s 10-episdoe run, HBO’s hit series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty ended in a dramatic fashion fitting for such a polarizing season. By the end of Season 1, Jerry Buss‘s (John C. Reilly) mother, Jessie Buss (Sally Field), passed away, former Los Angels Laker Spencer Haywood (Wood Harris) stopped his assassination attempt on the team, Jeanie Buss (Hadley Robinson) became more disillusioned with her father’s debaucherous antics, and, most importantly, the Lakers hoisted up their first NBA title in eight years. Season 1 was a series of shocking retellings of history that pissed off a bunch of Lakers legends, and there is no doubt Season 2 will be much of the same.
Created by Max Borenstein and Jim Hecht, and executive produced by Adam McKay, Winning Time is based on Jeff Pearlman’s book Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s. Season 1 barely scratched the surface of what the book covers, only chronicling one year of the Showtime Lakers’ dynastic decade. Yet, it was enough to enrage many of the actual living Lakers its characters are based on. Jerry West has demanded an apology and retraction from HBO and Winning Time‘s production team. The indomitable Kareem Abdul-Jabar dismissively described the show as “deliberately dishonest” and “drearily dull.” Magic Johnson vowed to never watch Winning Time because of its inaccuracy and lack of input from the Lakers organization. If they felt disrespected by Johnson being depicted as a womanizing egomaniac, West as a short-tempered control freak, and Abdul-Jabar as a stoic dictator who would tell a child to “fuck off,” then they’re likely going to boycott what comes next in the Winning Time story.
Season 1 begins with Johnson leaving the doctor’s office in 1991, likely after his positive HIV diagnosis, but Season 1 doesn’t get to it. We don’t get to see the perpetually happy Johnson brawling on the court with Phoenix Suns player Kevin Johnson or the zen-like Abdul-Jabar putting Denver Nuggets Danny Schayes in a headlock on the court. Jerry Buss was once sued for $25 million by a woman who claimed he promised to take care of her for the rest of her life.
There is a lot more for Lakers legends to be pissed about if HBO decides to bring Winning Time back for a second season.
Will there be a second season of Winning Time?
HBO wasted little time assuring us there would be more Winning Time when it renewed the show for a second season on April 7, days after the fifth episode aired. There’s no surprise HBO wants to stay in the faux Showtime Lakers business after the show steadily began attracting a wider audience. The fifth episode drew 1.2 million viewers across all platforms on its premiere night, a 37% increase from the series premiere. By the show’s seventh week on air, the series premiere’s viewership had ballooned from 900,000 on opening night to close to seven million, according to HBO reporting to Variety.
When will Season 2 of Winning Time come out?
After radio silence for over a year since renewing the mockumentary series, HBO released a Season 2 trailer announcing its return being set for Sunday, August 6.
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It’s hard to argue Season 1’s appeal was partly due to it airing during the end of the NBA season, and the start of the NBA Playoffs, when the drama in the Association is at its most feverish, and fans are salivating for any basketball action. With that in mind, don’t be surprised if the Winning Time Lakers return to your TV screens in March 2023, just as the real-life Lakers are making a push for the team’s 18th title.
What will Season 2 of Winning Time be about?
With Season 1 ending at the inception of the Lakers’ 1980s dynasty following the team heroically winning the 1980 NBA championship, the new trailer intimated this series will likely revolve around the 1984 NBA Finals, the first Finals matchup between Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers in the 1980s. The furthest out the trailer shows is after the Celtics win the 1981 NBA title, but Coach Pat Riley (Adrien Brody) is heard vehemently asserting the Lakers championships mean nothing because they didn’t come against the Celtics.
Winning Time‘s season seems all but locked to take us into the dynasty’s later years. Francesca Orsi, Executive Vice President at HBO Programming, confirmed as much during the Season 2 renewal announcement when they said, “We can’t wait to see how this team will tell the next chapter of this dynasty.” The team Orsi referred to includes Winning Time executive producer and showrunner Max Borenstein, who has given the only public tidbits about the upcoming season.
Speaking with Deadline following the Season 1 finale, Borenstein stated Season 2 would be told at roughly the same pace as Season 1, which chronicled the approximately 12 months between Buss purchasing the Lakers and the Lakers winning the 1980 NBA Finals. Borenstein believes “there’s a lot of transitional stuff that starts to happen in that next season” involving Lakers head coach Westhead and assistant coach Riley. Westhead was fired as Lakers head coach 11 games into the 1981-1982 season after the defending champions were eliminated from the 1981 NBA Playoffs by the Houston Rockets. Riley replaced Westhead, but not before the sort of Showtime drama made for TV. Westhead was relieved of his duties on November 19, 1981, a day after Johnson publicly demanded to be traded, citing differences with Westhead as a reason. It was later revealed by players like Norm Nixon that Westhead’s isolation style of play worked against the team’s fastbreak offense that led to their 1980 title.
Borenstein also stated Season 2 of Winning Time would focus on a “struggle Magic has that next year, and Jerry West’s next step in the direction of becoming the general manager.” In the 1980-1981 season, following the Lakers title run, Buss named West the offensive coach after the former Lakers’ head coach declined Buss’s offer to take his old job back following Westhead’s firing. Winning Time‘s first season proved the show could find drama gold in the sort of events that transpired in the year between the start of the 1980-1981 and 1981-1982 seasons.
The temperamental Riley didn’t find out he would be the head coach until two hours before the press conference announcing Westhead’s firing, likely inducing the type of enraged anxiety he exhibited in Season 1 when he was unsure if Jack McKinney’s return to the team before the 1980 NBA Playoffs meant Riley was going to lose his job. Likewise, the same Magic Johnson who tied much of his identity to being universally adored in Season 1 was booed by the home crowd at The Forum in the first game after Westhead’s firing. Back then, fans believed Johnson’s self-centered trade demand was why the Lakers lost the coach who brought them their only NBA title in close to a decade at the time. Also, in a bit of storybook irony, Johnson will be watching arch-nemesis Bird win his first NBA title, as Bird did at the end of Season 1.
If Season 1 was a look into the reinvention of the Lakers, Season 2 appears to be about the difficulty of fitting everyone into the team’s new identity while trying not to be blinded from their ultimate goals by the spotlight.
Who will be in Season 2 of Winning Time?
Given Borenstein’s comments and the appearances in the trailer, it’s a safe bet most of the core cast from Season 1 will run it back in Season 2. That includes Buss (John C. Reilly), Johnson (Quincy Isaiah), Claire Rothman (Gabby Hoffman), West (Jason Clarke), Riley (Adrian Brody), Abdul-Jabbar (Solomon Hughes), Westhead (Jason Segel), and Jeanie Buss (Hadley Robinson). Since Season 2 will likely chronicle the 1980-1981 season, Season 1 favorites Norm Nixon (DeVaughn Nixon) and Michael Cooper (Delante Desouza) will likely return. And the feud between the Lakers and the Boston Celtics—namely Johnson vs. Bird— was the marquee rivalry for the 1980s. So, Bird (Sean Patrick Small) and Celtics’ ornery general manager Red Auerbach (Michael Chiklis) will terrorize the sunshine state’s jewels for years to come.
A new season will mean the likely exit of former mainstays. Wood Harris, who plays the struggling Spencer Haywood, delivered some of the most captivating acting performances of the first season but may not appear in Season 2 since Haywood was overseas playing with the Italian professional basketball team the Reyer Venezia the season following the Lakers’ title win in 1980. Jessie Buss’s (Sally Fields) motherly tough love will more than likely be absent from Season 2 for obvious, heartbreaking reasons.
There will also be new faces joining the series. The Lakers were eliminated from the first round of the 1981 NBA Playoffs by a Houston Rockets team led by a dominant force named Moses Malone. So, expect to see Big Mo on your screen in Season 2.
Keith Nelson is a writer by fate and journalist by passion, who has connected dots to form the bigger picture for Men’s Health, Vibe Magazine, LEVEL MAG, REVOLT TV, Complex, Grammys.com, Red Bull, Okayplayer, and Mic, to name a few.
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