Critic Reviews

[Magic and the Lakers] transformed sports in the public’s eye from just a game into show business. You’ll see how in this colorful, explosive, thoroughly entertaining series.

While Winning Time hasn’t invented the sports docudrama, I can’t see a future in which it doesn’t set a visual standard by which all sports docudramas (at least in the near term) will be compared.

“Winning Time” is an Adam McKay (“Don’t Look Up,” “The Big Short,” “Anchorman”) production and it’s a rowdy mix of quick cuts, famous names, salty scenes and frenetic energy. The casting is just delicious. ... This one’s got a lot of bounce in it. Again, Big fun.

Season 2 is a dizzying ride that pays homage to an era and a franchise that helped shape the world of professional basketball as we know it today. Hilarious, exasperating, and even heartbreaking, the magic has indeed returned.

It actually responds to some of the criticism from real-life Lakers figures of Season 1 with some of the most comprehensive and entertaining press notes I’ve ever encountered.

Overall, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty returns with a solid and, in some ways, even more captivating follow-up that comprehensively sums up a large chunk of basketball history. And in a TV landscape where the amount of sports dramas and documentaries is ever-growing, that’s an impressive accomplishment.

On the whole though, Winning Time isn’t heavy or preachy. It mostly shifts between affectionate, wonky, and playfully ironic.

It bites off more than it can chew by taking on too many characters. We follow more than a dozen characters through a flurry of flashbacks and strange psychological detours, explaining how this parade of damaged men came to be so damaged. (It’s ten episodes, but it could’ve easily be six, or even four.) Its dynamic style and the intriguing personalities involved help it rise above all of that, though.

Its breakneck pace and flashy mix of genre-bending elements combine to craft a series that’s difficult to look away from and impossible to ignore. HBO’s latest Sunday night offering isn’t so much of a layup as it is a slam dunk, delivering a fun, glitzy origin story of an iconic NBA dynasty.

This isn’t a game-changing drama, but it’s an absurdly entertaining one.