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<div><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">One of </span><em>Rotten Tomatoes</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">' Most Anticipated Series of 2022, HBO's sports drama </span><em>Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> is now available to binge on Showmax.</span></div>
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<div><em>Winning Time</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> dramatises the professional and personal lives of the legendary players and coaches of one of basketball's most revered and dominant dynasties - the Los Angeles Lakers, a team that defined an American era, both on and off the court.</span></div>
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<div><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">"Most people think of the NBA now as one of the biggest sports leagues in the world, but in 1979, the NBA was bottom of the barrel," explains Oscar winner Adam McKay (</span><em>Succession</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">, </span><em>Don't Look Up</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">), who directed the series pilot. "</span><em>Winning Time</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> picks up where Dr. Jerry Buss is buying a team in a league that some people aren't even sure is going to continue."</span></div>
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<div><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Although the Lakers were already an established and formidable team, the arrival of Buss (played by Oscar nominee John C. Reilly from </span><em>Chicago</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">, </span><em>Boogie Nights</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">, and </span><em>Magnolia</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">) changed everything, beginning with the audience experience. </span></div>
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<div><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">"Jerry thought, 'This is a great game,'" says Reilly. "'All you have to do is make a place that people really want to come to, and make it entertaining.'"</span></div>
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<div><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">"[Jerry's] goal was to make it like theatre, and to just have it be a high-energy night and event," says Critics Choice Award winner Jason Segel (</span><em>Forgetting Sarah Marshall</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">, </span><em>How I Met Your Mother</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">), who plays coach Paul Westhead. "It became where you needed to be if you wanted to be seen."</span></div>
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<div><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">On the court, it was Coach Jack McKinney (played by Critics Choice award nominee Tracy Letts, from </span><em>Ford vs Ferrari</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">, </span><em>Lady Bird</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">), who helped instal the Lakers' killer fast break offence. "Just the pace alone made the game so much more exciting to watch," says Reilly.</span></div>
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<div><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Of course, the magic ingredient was the players themselves, headlined by the likes of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Stormin' Norman Nixon and the man many fans still consider the greatest point guard of all time, Earvin 'Magic' Johnson.</span></div>
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<div><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">"Buss was looking for showmanship, and there was no player better suited to that than Magic Johnson," says series writer and co-creator Max Borenstein (</span><em>Godzilla vs. Kong</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">). As Reilly puts it, "Jerry and Magic shared a sense of obligation to the audience to entertain." </span></div>
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<div><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Finding the actors to step into the players' oversize shoes was no mean feat. In addition to convincingly capturing the essence of their larger-than-life (and still living) subjects, the actors had to be athletic, and very tall – 1.8m (or 6 ft 2 in) is considered fairly short for a basketball player. And, they had to be able to </span><em>move</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> – both on the court and off.</span></div>
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<div><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">At the show's Los Angeles premiere, McKay revealed that the casting process was "one of the greatest challenges I have ever encountered. How do you cast Magic Johnson? How do you cast Kareem Abdul-Jabbar?".</span></div>
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<div><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">The team got lucky with actor DeVaughn Nixon (</span><em>Snowfall</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">, </span><em>Runaways</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">), who stepped up to play his real-life father, Norm Nixon, but filling the other iconic roles would take a wide net, and a willingness to bet on unknown talent.</span></div>
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<div><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">They finally found their Magic Johnson in former college football player and screen newcomer Quincy Isaiah, who had been for hundreds of auditions and was about to throw in the towel and join the military when </span><em>Winning Time</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> snapped him up, while professional basketball player and educator Dr. Solomon Hughes makes his acting debut as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.</span></div>
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<div><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">But could the actors deliver the goods on the court? An intensive basketball bootcamp with show consultant and former Laker Rick Fox tested them to the limits, and then basketball tech Idan Ravin, known as The Hoops Whisperer, came in to nail down the characters' iconic playing styles. </span></div>
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<div><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">"The training regime was brutal," says Nixon. And it had to be. As Ravin says, "It's one thing to say, 'Okay, I'm just playing a basketball player on TV.' That's easy. It's another thing to play a basketball player that everybody knows."</span></div>
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<div><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">The cast also includes Oscar winners Adrien Brody (</span><em>The French Dispatch</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">, </span><em>Succession</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">, </span><em>The Pianist</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">) and Sally Field (</span><em>Maniac</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">, </span><em>Forrest Gump, Brothers & Sisters</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">), Emmy winner Julianne Nicholson (</span><em>Mare of Easttown</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">, </span><em>I, Tonya</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">), Emmy nominee Gaby Hoffman (</span><em>Transparent</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">, </span><em>Girls</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">) and Screen Actors Guild nominee Jason Clarke (</span><em>Mudbound,</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> </span><em>Zero Dark Thirty</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">).</span></div>
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<div><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Inspired by Jeff Pearlman's no-holds-barred book </span><em>Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s, Winning Time</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> has an 84% critics' rating on </span><em>Rotten Tomatoes</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">, with the critics' consensus saying, "</span><em>Winning Time</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> pairs a larger-than-life roster of characters with whiplash style to deliver an absolute slam dunk."</span></div>
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<div><em>Vogue</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> declared it "the escapist sports drama we need now," while </span><em>Rolling Stone</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> called the show, "a hell of a lot of fun to watch." </span></div>
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<div><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">HBO has already renewed </span><em>Winning Time</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> for a second season. </span></div>
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<div><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Watch the trailer: </span><a href="https://t.nylas.com/t1/315/dy1vysrooewtn4d4co9ngb2iy/1/6a29635afa92af4a874d39a0fa9aac1434f35da0a3e34f17b76105ffc2738ec5" rel="noreferrer" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; color: #1155cc" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/WqbWwKx1nBU</a></div>
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<div><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Watch </span><em>Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty</em><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> on Showmax: </span><a href="https://t.nylas.com/t1/315/dy1vysrooewtn4d4co9ngb2iy/2/a5baecb6bf27c862c47c5fa049026c00360b207153fb998a669b889613b75298" rel="noreferrer" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; color: #1155cc" target="_blank">https://www.showmax.com/eng/tvseries/zwlnmori-winning-time-the-rise-of-the-lakers-dynasty</a><span style="color:#000000; font-family:verdana,sans-serif"> </span></div>
