Review of "Time to Win: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty" - a daring dramedy about the rise of a great club and the NBA
The new series by Adam McKay and HBO captivates with nostalgia for the 1980s and falls in love with basketball.
The end of the 1970s, the NBA is on the verge of ruin. The Los Angeles Lakers basketball club is considered an eternal underdog - they have only one championship and eight defeats in the finals over the past 20 years. Businessman Jerry Bass is confident that he can fix the situation, so he plans to buy the club for an astronomical $67.5 million for those times. The Lakers draft college league talent Magic Johnson, who, along with the legendary Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, turns the team into league favorites. This period will go down in the history of the club under the beautiful name "Showtime".
It's hard to imagine a more cinematic sport than basketball: the constant contact of the players, the 24-second limit on attack, the rapidly changing score and the ability to shoot in the last seconds in a desperate attempt to save the game. Even football, adored by everyone, provides far fewer opportunities for dramatization of what is happening. Filmmakers seem to have reminisced about this in recent years as they have begun to build stories around basketball more often: just think of Ben Affleck's drama Outside, Adam Sandler's thriller Uncut Gems, and the recent Apple TV+ series Fortitude. The release of "Time to Win" at first glance seems logical, but it seems surprising that the creators seem to be not interested in showing the suspense and dynamics of basketball games: in the series, the games are shot surprisingly faded - like a chaotic set of close-ups, alternating with the reaction of coaches and audience.
The fact is that basketball in the HBO series plays far from the first role - it is much more important for the creators to show the passions that boil outside the court. Imagine a recent Netflix “Last Dance” that was filmed entirely from the point of view of the controversial player Dennis Rodman: constant drinking, partying, sex, fighting and some outstanding basketball, bringing the team one championship after another. This is how the dramedy “Time to Win” turned out - this is a leapfrog of stories about two dozen people close to the Lakers of that time. They solve their problems from time to time, but most of the time they just enjoy life in sun-drenched Los Angeles. The series even begins with Jerry Bass explaining to a naked Playboy model that basketball is no different than sex: sort of the same intimate and rhythmic process of hitting the basket. Not the best comparison, but eloquent. However, there are really interesting storylines in this representation of hedonism - for example, it is informative to follow how the media, fans and sponsors treat African-American Magic Johnson and white Larry Bird in different ways. About racism in the NBA and the USA of the 80s, the creators speak without the pathos and ostentatious condemnation typical of the topic, so any conclusions remain on the viewer.
“Time to Win” is a rare series in which it is not so much what it is about that is important, but how it is done. If you are familiar with the latest films of Adam McKay, then dramedy can easily be called "McKay". The filmmaker, who explained the causes of the 2008 economic crisis in the most accessible language to the audience, took the same approach to the story of how the Lakers became one of the most important teams in American sports, revolutionized basketball and turned the NBA into an international phenomenon. Individual characters break the fourth wall by chewing or simply ironically commenting on what is happening to the audience; archival footage flashes on the screen every now and then; one scene was shot with film imitation (coarse grain, noise, perforation), the next one was shot with imitation of a VHS recording. Alas, sometimes the creators go too far in an attempt to simplify the presentation of material or fill the timing with beautiful but useless cuts, but you should give them their due - stylistic decisions create the necessary vibe of the series. Thanks to him, hour-long episodes fly by unnoticed and, worst of all, nostalgia for the 80s wakes up again.
The series one of the most important points of the narrative puts 1991 - the moment when Johnson was diagnosed with HIV, especially in no hurry to get to this period. Almost the entire season is devoted to the basketball player's debut season, which clearly hints at HBO's plans to turn Time to Win into a multi-year project, although the original plan was to make the series an anthology and dedicate the second season to the Lakers of the millennia. One way or another, one can only believe that the audience will be imbued with the history of Johnson, Kareem, Bass and the Lakers of the 80s - apart from the documentary "The Last Dance", basketball in general and the NBA in particular lacked a hit that could infect the viewer with passion to the game. Perhaps he has finally arrived.
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