Winning Time, a show about the team that defined the NBA in the 1980s, has finally entered that decadent decade. Before their final game before the All-Star break, spirits are soaring in the first-place Lakers’ locker room. A big part of that success is that interim coach Paul Westhead is playing power forward Spencer Haywood again. But unbeknownst to Westhead, Haywood is playing through a serious injury that assistant coach Pat Riley easily spots. Riley, the de facto coach of the team, shows off his own battle scar from his playing days and asks the team’s enforcer to take some time off so that he can be fresh for their playoff run. Haywood’s healthy enough to join the rest of the team (and Pat) in giving Westhead a Barbasol shower, which is sort of like a Gatorade bath but instead of winning a championship, it’s to playfully shut your head coach up from quoting Shakespeare. Playtime is over when the actual head coach, Jack McKinney, shows up unannounced after spending the last two months in a hospital (some of that time in a coma).
McKinney takes Westhead and Riley back to his office to tell them he’s ignoring the doctor’s orders to retire. And the first order of business: finding out whose dumb idea it was to bench Spencer Haywood. As Westhead fumbles with an excuse, Riley falls on the grenade and says it was his fault. When McKinney says he wants Haywood to play even more minutes, Riley tries to look out for his wounded warrior with an off-the-cuff idea: There are rumors that the Pistons want to trade their All-Star forward Bob McAdoo, so Haywood will need to pass a physical in case the Lakers want to get in on the transaction. The notion doesn’t sit well with McKinney, who physically recoils. Once they’re alone, McKinney tells Westhead that there’s only room for one assistant coach when he’s back on the bench. Even though the Lakers would still employ neither man were it not for Riley’s behind-the-scenes leadership, McKinney orders Westhead to fire Riley and to do so quickly so he has time to line up a new job.
Just a few blocks away from the Forum is the Centinela Hospital, where Sally Field’s terminally ill Jessie Buss is being discharged. As a TV show centered around a mens’ basketball team in the 1980s, Winning Time would inherently have issues with its female characters. And the male-dominated writers’ room hasn’t done the show any favors with Tamera Tomakili’s Cookie Johnson running-on-a-hamster-wheel of a storyline or the abandonment of Gabby Hoffman’s Claire Rothman halfway through the season. But at least Jessie is still with us temporarily, as she checks herself out of the hospital so she can die at home on a strict five martini a day diet. The only thing is, she’s keeping it a secret from her son Dr. Jerry Buss. The reasoning she gives her granddaughter Jeanie: Loving a man means keeping them entertained and distracted from grave matters. Apparently, Jerry Buss, a literal rocket scientist, is so preoccupied with basketball and getting laid that he thinks the end-of-life hospice nurse Lucia that he hired is just a normal at-home caregiver.
Before the All-Star Game in Landover, Maryland, Magic and Kareem attend a luncheon where the former tries to play it cool meeting his childhood idol, Julius Erving, a.k.a. Dr. J, whose flashy play laid the groundwork for Magic. Before they’re introduced, Cookie surprises Magic by letting him know she just landed a job offer in Detroit. Though when she mentions that they’re also opening a branch in Los Angeles, his smile and enthusiasm wash away. His distaste for a monogamous relationship is cemented when he stumbles upon introducing Cookie to Dr. J. Erving and his beau, who sidesteps the awkwardness by inviting them to a post-game soirée.
Back in Los Angeles, Spencer Haywood has the entire team over at his house to watch the All-Star Game. But before the night is over, Westhead’s cowardice and inability to speak to Haywood or Riley one-on-one will blow up in everyone’s faces. First, coach McKinney walks with Haywood and his baby daughter to discuss his plan to increase the big man’s playing time. A confused Haywood tells McKinney that Westhead and Riley wanted him to focus on defense. But McKinney tells him that he’ll be back to coaching soon and that Haywood shouldn’t worry about those trade rumors either. Back inside, Riley presses Westhead for more clarity on his role once McKinney is back as the coach, but all “the Professor†can do is deflect and hide in the bathroom.
While Westhead tries not to puke his guts out, a betrayed Haywood confronts Riley about the trade, who in turn grabs Westhead for a word. Riley wants Westhead to grow a pair and get McKinney to stop undermining both of them. But Westhead, stuck between the man who’s the reason for his job title and the man who’s secretly the reason behind all his success, is too cowardly to tell Riley that he’s out of a job. After Riley storms off, having rightfully claimed that he and Westhead saved McKinney’s job and not the other way around, the night continues to head in a dark direction as Haywood scours his bedroom for a crack rock and smokes away the thought of being traded yet again after seemingly finding a team that fit him.
Also watching the All-Star Game is the Buss family, drunk off champagne and full of KFC. Like Westhead, Jeanie’s insides are all torn up from the secret she’s hiding. That is, until she pukes everything up into a KFC bucket after imaging her father in an orgy. Jerry thinks it’s just amateur hour drinking until he spots his mom’s wig sliding off her head and realizes her prognosis might not be as good as she’s been telling him. The next morning, a hungover Jerry apologizes to Lucia for not being able to drive her home. The two bond when the nurse reveals that she’s living a very Jessie Buss-like existence, having become the breadwinner for her only son when her husband left the picture. When Jerry offers to pay her son’s college tuition, the two share a moment (though Jerry’s subconscious intentions are clearly lecherous). That moment is interrupted by Jeanie, who calls out her father’s wanton libido and reveals the truth about his mom’s health. Later, Jerry drops Lucia off at her modest house. This triggers a rush of memories and a flood of tears from Jerry, who dries himself in her bosom before he takes advantage of the situation by exposing and sucking on Lucia’s breasts. At least the writers of Winning Time finally showed some restraint by not having Jerry Buss turn to the camera and say, “Lucia symbolizes my Oedipus complex,†as he sexually assaults his mother’s nurse.
Following a dinner with Commissioner Larry O’Brien, future Commissioner David Stern, and Larry Bird about the NBA’s future, Magic returns to his hotel room all hopped up on making Bird look like a fool. But the joke’s on Magic: Cookie just got a call from her friend Rhonda, who’s pregnant with Magic’s child. Magic vehemently denies it, but Cookie packs up her bags and heads back to the Midwest. Magic shows up solo for drinks with Erving, Abdul-Jabbar, and their better halves, where Dr. J, not knowing the full context of Cookie’s no-show, gives the kid some advice that Magic cherry-picks to fit his current mood.
As the Lakers get ready for their post-All-Star break swing, McKinney joins the team on their road trip. At Nick’s Cafe in Philadelphia, Westhead realizes that McKinney’s doctors might be right after seeing McKinney struggle to sign an autograph. While Westhead retreats to the bathroom yet again, McKinney catches Riley giving a no-holds-barred TV interview. Taking matters into his own hands, Riley slyly mentions to the press that changing horses midstream, especially successful thoroughbreds like he and Westhead, wouldn’t be what’s best for the team. Before the game, Westhead flounders once more when he tries to give Riley the bad news. But this time, Westhead doesn’t make it to the bathroom. Blood starts seeping out of his pants and he ends up being rushed to the hospital with stress-induced kidney stones. McKinney visits Westhead in the hospital, where the bedridden interim coach finally tells his mentor that he should let them finish out this season, then return next season. McKinney, a longtime assistant coach who got his first head coaching job with the Lakers, lures Westhead in by admitting he knows how hard it can be to sit on that bench as someone’s flunky while knowing you’re destined for greater things. Then he sucker-punches Westhead by admitting he hired him as his assistant coach because he knew Westhead didn’t have that feeling.
Riley’s first game as head coach (actually interim interim head coach) is a disaster, as Julius Erving and the Sixers destroy a clearly distracted Magic Johnson, who has the worst game of his rookie campaign. After the game, Erving stops by the visitor’s locker room to exchange pleasantries with everyone but Magic, who copycats Bird’s gruff personality after Erving re-invites Magic and Cookie to dinner. Once Erving leaves, out pops Jerry West, who gives Magic a wide breadth of bad advice, from misinterpreting Erving’s friendly demeanor as trickery to telling him that he wouldn’t give up his one ring for happiness. “Happy is a distraction,†he tells Magic. “And nobody will understand that. Not your family, not your fucking teammates, not your woman, nobody.†If happiness is a distraction, why don’t championship rings weigh down his hands? The episode ends with Magic somehow pumped up by this advice from a miserable man — described in the pilot as “never been happy†— who squeaked out one Finals victory in nine tries. It’s a muddled ending to a show limping towards its final episodes like an overplayed Spencer Haywood.
Forum Facts
• Breaking the Fourth-Wall Expository Revelation of the Episode: After Magic Johnson makes David Stern laugh with a joke, he looks to the camera and tells us, “That got him, huh?†in case that wasn’t clear.
• Two seasons later, Pat Riley would get his wish when the Lakers acquired Bob McAdoo to shore up their bench during the 1981-1982 season. McAdoo, whose career trajectory mirrored Spencer Haywood’s, revitalized his career in L.A. as a beloved member of two championship teams. Later, the Hall of Fame inductee won three more championships alongside Riley as an assistant coach with the Miami Heat.
• Today’s NBA head coaches typically have six assistant coaches with them on the sideline. But back in the 1979-1980 season, there really was just room for one assistant.
• For a show steeped in L.A. history, there’s been a near-total lack of cultural references for the region or time period beyond obvious signifiers like palm trees and the Playboy Mansion. So it was nice to hear a shout-out to local commercial legend Cal Worthington and his Dog Spot in this episode.
• Julius Erving’s rock-the-baby dunk over Magic Johnson is one of the most iconic dunks of all time. Only it didn’t happen to Magic as it’s portrayed on Winning Time. It was Michael Cooper who got dunked on. Looking back, Cooper called it “the greatest dunk of all time.â€