John C. Reilly Shoots For The Stars as Team Owner Jerry Buss in WINNING TIME: THE RISE OF THE LAKERS DYNASTY

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede “Welcome to sunny Los Angeles – great for tans, (bleep) for fans,” says Dr. Jerry Buss, played by John C. Reilly, in the opening minutes of HBO’s WINNING TIME: THE RISE OF THE LAKERS DYNASTY. It’s hard to believe there was a time when the Los Angeles Lakers specifically, and the National Basketball Association more widely, were not really a big deal in the sports culture of North America. But in the late 1970s, the NBA had a real public-relations problem. “It’s funny, when this story starts, basketball was getting beat in the television ratings by golf and bowling,” Reilly said in a virtual roundtable interview. “So this shows you where we’ve come since 1979.” Debuting Sunday, March 6, only on Crave, WINNING TIME: THE RISE OF THE LAKERS DYNASTY takes an audacious and sometimes outrageous approach to filmmaking, both narratively and visually, courtesy of executive producer Adam McKay. The story tracks how everything changed when Dr. Buss bought the Lakers, and subsequently pushed the philosophy that pro basketball games at the Forum in Inglewood should sparkle, with glitz and glamour worthy of Hollywood. In addition to Reilly, the WINNING TIME cast is as deep as an NBA all-star team, with Quincy Isaiah as Magic Johnson, Jason Clarke as Jerry West, Adrien Brody as Pat Riley, Gaby Hoffmann as Claire Rothman, Tracy Letts as Jack McKinney, Jason Segel as Paul Westhead, Hadley Robinson as Jeanie Buss, DeVaughn Nixon as Norm Nixon, Solomon Hughes as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Tamera Tomakili as Cookie Johnson, Michael Chiklis as Red Auerbach, Sean Patrick Small as Larry Bird, and Sally Field as Jessie Buss, among many others. In terms of on-court product, the turnaround for the NBA commenced with the fortuitous and simultaneous arrival of generational players Magic Johnson, who went to the Lakers, and Larry Bird, who went to the Boston Celtics. The Magic-Bird rivalry had begun when they were college athletes, and they carried it into the pros. The Lakers and Celtics subsequently combined to win eight out of nine NBA championships from 1980 to 1988. WINNING TIME firmly focuses on the West Coast portion of that duel, with the endlessly optimistic but initially funds-challenged Dr. Buss trying to energize skeptics into going along with his grand vision. “Before 1979, basketball was just an athletic event, and it was Jerry (Buss) who realized, ‘no, this is a show,’ ” Reilly said. “He thought, ‘this is entertainment, when people come to the stadium, it has to be like they’re coming to Studio 54, or to Disneyland,’ or whatever it is. The place itself is a destination.” As for Buss and the times he lived in, Reilly added, “Jerry was a bigger-than-life person, and I just became really fascinated with this era of men, in America in 1979. There’s a sense of entitlement, and the swagger, and the macho thing. It wasn’t that Jerry was so unique in that way, in terms of being a man in 1979, but I think he was more a product of the time. There were a lot of pressures for men, but they also had quite a place of entitlement in the world.” Having to put that all together with an intense on-screen portrayal, Reilly admitted he felt the strain. “(Buss) had to be charming and funny, but he was also very volatile and driven, and I didn’t even realize until I was finished, actually, the toll that it was taking on me – I really fell apart after this was over,” Reilly said. “And I realized it was because of the tension from the story. It starts in one place, and just ratchets up all the way through the season, until he’s really at his wit’s end by the end of 10 episodes. It gets very emotional – there’s sickness, and death, and loss, and all these heavy things that happened to Jerry that have nothing to do with basketball. Personally, I think it’s an amazing American story, from where he came from, to where he ended up, and that kind of social mobility can be difficult in other places. It was a great honour to play Jerry Buss.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv