William Azabal
Los Angeles (USA), March 3 (EFE).- HBO’s new drama series, “Time of victory: The Los Lakers dynasty”, premieres this Sunday and offers an explosive mix of the ins and outs of the NBA and the lesser-known face of the ’80s Los Angeles Lakers, starring Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
The production gives one lime and one sand to the North American basketball league and questions the image of that legendary Lakers team, a squad that marked an era for its followers, laid the foundations of the industry and converted the players into pop culture superstars.
It is an eight-episode production directed and co-produced by Adam Mckay, who has accumulated recent success thanks to the series “Succession” and the movies “The vice of power” or “Don’t look up.”
It is a fictionalized adaptation of the book “Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s” by sportswriter Jeff Pearlman.
“It’s a story that speaks of two worlds that mixed, basketball and business, to change the sports industry and how we see it now,” explained Quincy Isaiah, who plays Magic Johnson in the series, during an interview with Efe .
Quincy Isaiah and his partner Solomon Hughes (Kareem Abudl-Jabbar) are two actors with little experience, two ‘rookies’ in basketball jargon, but they already know the pressure after the expectation that the series is generating.
Lebron James himself, star of the current Lakers, showed on his social networks how eager he is to see the premiere, and the most enthusiastic audience fantasizes about another basketball blockbuster two years after the success of “The Last Dance” (Netflix ), the docuseries about Michael Jordan.
THE MAGNIFYING GLASS ON A TEAM THAT MARKED AN ERA
However, “Time of victory” does not generate sympathy among the vast majority of the members of those Lakers of the 80s, who refused to contribute their vision for the production documentation process.
As a result of this refusal, according to its creators, they had to do “own research” to complement the story.
Throughout the series, the magnifying glass is put on the sporting part of a spectacular batch of players, but also on the most egotistical facet of some protagonists eaten away by a dazzling success.
Some like the former owner of the team, Jerry Buss; coach Pat Riley; and players like Johnson, Abdul-Jabbar or Jerry West don’t always come off well in the narrative.
The actors Solomon Hughes and Quincy Isaiah prefer to focus only on “the positive part” of the series and declare themselves “admirers” of the characters they bring to life.
However, they are aware that it can cause blisters.
“Of course things happened 34 years ago, when they were 20 and almost children, but we must not forget that this is a television series and that we respect them,” Isaiah said.
“Time of Victory: The Lakers Dynasty” premieres this Sunday, kicking off an avalanche of new television projects with basketball as the main theme.
Hulu is developing a documentary series on the history of the Lakers, and others like Magic Johnson will have their own production on Apple TV Plus in April. EFE
gac/afs/cdp
(Photo / Video)
© EFE 2022. The redistribution and rebroadcasting of all or part of the contents of Efe’s services is expressly prohibited, without the prior and express consent of Agencia EFE SA
