Based on the novel Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s by Jeff Pearlman, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty chronicles the 1980s Showtime era of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team featuring notable NBA stars Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Series co-creator and showrunner Max Borenstein describes the challenges of having to imagine what certain moments and conversations looked like without having been in the room: "Our role is to take the things we know - I look at it as the tip of the iceberg... the role of the drama is to then imaginatively reconstruct what might have been or could have been underneath the surface, and oftentimes.. you're imagining your way into that room where you have no idea exactly what was said." Borenstein goes on to explain what drew him to tell this particular story from this particular time period: "I happen to be a basketball fan, but what was exciting to me was not just retelling the story of this particular basketball team; it was that this particular basketball team and this dynasty speaks to a change in the way entertainment worked and the way celebrity works... I think the Showtime Lakers [are] a perfect prism through which to view that moment in time." Season one of Winning Time is now available on HBO Max.
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