Showtime Book Review

Yeah, I read the book that 'Winning Time' is based on, I'm predictable, so what?

I grew up a fan of the Boston Celtics. Some of my fondest childhood memories involve sitting on the couch in my grandparents’ part of our house (they built an in-law apartment type thing when they moved in with us a few years before they passed away), drinking Tab, eating popcorn and/or ice cream and watching the Celtics with my grandmother. They generally weren’t very good - this was in the period where Larry Bird retired but prior to Rick Pitino coming in and things becoming if not successful, than at least interesting. We still watched the games religiously - she loved sports - mostly the Red Sox and the Celtics - and even though she spent more time bemoaning the poor play it still was one of my favorite things to do. I was a short, scrawny kid (I was 5’3 heading into my sophomore year of high school even though I’m now 5’11) who got picked on a lot in middle school. My grandmother was really close to me and those nights were solace for a really hard time. Given all that, there was no way I wouldn’t keep up with my Boston teams even after living in DC for coming up on 14 years now.

I say all this in preface to saying that, in spite of my hating the Lakers with every bone in my body, I really enjoyed the first season of ‘Winning Time’ on HBO and it inspired me to read ‘Showtime’, the book it was based upon. It’s cliche, but the book was much, much better and I definitely recommend it. The book covers the Lakers beginning at basically the same time as the show, with Buss’ acquisition, but running all the way until Magic’s HIV announcement, something that shows up in Episode 1 of Season 1 and is then never referenced again. The book does a great job digging into the basketball and the lives of the varied and colorful characters that make up the Showtime Lakers - Larry Buss, Magic, Kareem, James Worthy, Pat Riley, etc. While reliving the two finals where they beat the Celtics was not great, it really puts the teams successes in context and is a remarkably quick read for a book of 400-odd pages.

There are several areas where the book highlights some very clear choices by ‘Winning Time’ to move away from the source material. The first has to do with Paul Westhead’s tenure as coach. In the show, Westhead, played by Jason Segal, is a kind-hearted, Shakespeare quoting mediocrity, unable to have hard conversations with colleagues and viewed as weak by those around him. The show implies that his refusal to play Spencer Haywood sparked Haywood to resume using coke. In the book, the situation is almost completely reversed. Westhead is smart enough not to mess with the system his good friend Jack McKinney had implemented and refused to play Haywood because of his ongoing struggles with drugs. More broadly, the show makes it appear that Haywood is alone in his use of cocaine when the book states that multiple Lakers used cocaine, even if most of them did not struggle with addiction as did Haywood.

Another interesting area where the show chooses to change things, or at least soften some hard edges, is around the portrayal of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In the show, he’s portrayed as a distant, but ultimately good person whose experiences both as a black person and as a giant has made him wary of his fellow man. In the book, he’s really much less pleasant - something between being an unmitigated jerk and someone incapable of relating well with the general public. The book highlights multiple and varied ways he would turn down autograph requests in ways guaranteed to anger casual (or in some cases avid) fans.

There are other changes, but in some cases I think the shifting time spans covered may be at fault. The other piece is that while Claire Rothman, Jeannie Buss and the Lakers ownership are certainly a big part of the book, they are much more clearly at the center of the show. Whether the storylines they work through are the result of additional research, or simple mythologizing I don’t know, but it’s definitely a difference.

Overall, both the book and the show are about spectacularly successful athletes operating in an environment that was unlike anything most of us will ever experience. These were skilled, hard-working and gifted people operating in an environment of enormous opulence. I suspect that explosion of inequality and the rise of reality TV focusing on the life of the rich and famous has made the glitz and glamour of the 1980s Lakers seem somehow less impressive than it was at the time. Both book and show do a good job of illuminating just how unique they were, something even this devoted Boston fan (still annoyed at how flat we came out in last night’s loss) can recognize.

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