Jerry West seeks legal retraction from HBO over Winning Time portrayal
In a letter, West calls his representation in the series "a deliberately false characterization”
Aux News Jerry West
Lakers legend Jerry West is not too pleased with his portrayal in the HBO series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. He and his lawyers published a letter demanding a retraction by HBO and a public apology.
“You took a happy and super successful Lakers era and turned it into a pulpy soap opera,” reads the letter. “You depicted the people in a false light, not at all who they are, to garner ratings and make money.”
Actor Jason Clarke plays West in the fictional series all about the Showtime era of the Lakers throughout the ‘80s. West calls Clarke’s “baseless” portrayal of him “a deliberately false characterization.” Bad news for Jerry: The series has been renewed for a second season.
He’s not the only one who’s shared negative sentiments about the portrayal of the former head coach. Yesterday, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar shared his two cents about West’s depiction in the series via a Substack blog post.
“Instead of exploring his issues with compassion as a way to better understand the man, they turn him into a Wile E. Coyote cartoon to be laughed at,” Abdul-Jabbar wrote. “He never broke golf clubs, he didn’t throw his trophy through the window. Sure, those actions make dramatic moments, but they reek of facile exploitation of the man rather than exploration of character.”
The full statement from Skip Miller, Jerry West’s attorney, follows:
“The portrayal of NBA icon and LA Lakers legend Jerry West in ‘Winning Time’ is fiction pretending to be fact — a deliberately false characterization that has caused great distress to Jerry and his family. Contrary to the baseless portrayal in the HBO series, Jerry had nothing but love for and harmony with the Lakers organization, and in particular owner Dr. Jerry Buss, during an era in which he assembled one of the greatest teams in NBA history.
“HBO’s characterization of Jerry is so egregious and cruel that a number of former Lakers players, executives and associates—some who are also portrayed in the series and worked directly with him for many years—have weighed in:
– Michael Cooper, former Laker forward who worked closely with Jerry West as Special Assistant to the General Manager.
– Jamaal Wilkes, four-time NBA champion and former Laker forward.
– Mitch Kupchak, Charlotte Hornets President who played for the Lakers and worked for Jerry when he was Lakers General Manager.
– Frank Mariani, Lakers owner Dr. Buss’s longtime business partner.
– Claire L. Rothman, one of Dr. Buss’s closest associates who ran operations at The Forum for 20 years.
– Bob Steiner, former director of public relations for the Lakers, LA Kings and The Forum, as well as personal assistant to Dr. Buss.
– Charline Kenney, Dr. Buss’s executive secretary, who worked in the office with Jerry for 20 years.
– Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who played for Jerry as his coach and also worked with Jerry in the Lakers front office.
“Jerry West was an integral part of the Lakers and NBA’s success. It is a travesty that HBO has knowingly demeaned him for shock value and the pursuit of ratings. As an act of common decency, HBO and the producers owe Jerry a public apology and at the very least should retract their baseless and defamatory portrayal of him.”
48 Comments
doesn’t bother me or anything but i think the funniest part of the show is that they have the tv lakers losing games they won in real life. like, what is the point of this show if the data isn’t even correct? isn’t that mckay’s whole thing?
“……….Republicans.”~McKay, probably~
Climb down off the cross, clown.
wow, that is a weird ass thing. sure, it isn’t a documentary but why would you do something so factually weird?
So they can cram the story into the usual narrative railroad.
As the disclaimer in front of every episode mentions, it is a dramatization, which means that where the data doesn’t match the arc of the story they’re telling, the arc of the story takes precedence. (This is also true of almost all documentaries, by the way! Once you start arranging and curating a set of facts to tell a story in a specific amount of time, you have already begun departing from “what really happened.”)So as a docudrama producer, if you decide you need your characters to have lost a game they actually won or to yell at people they actually treated kindly to create stakes/momentum for your drama, that is your prerogative as a storyteller. Our prerogatives as members of the audience are whether to allow that to bother us or not. I’m choosing “not,” and enjoying the story they’re telling, but obviously others are making their own choices.
Then why make this about the Lakers at all? Why not just make a drama inspired by their lives under a different team name entirely?
This way they get to both trade off the idea that it’s actual history (if somewhat fabulized) and “sweeten” things to heighten the drama. I have trouble imagining there would be as much interest in the story of the 1979-1980 season of the Fayetteville Shamrocks, detailing the personality conflicts between gregarious rookie Marvin “The Wizard” Jackson and aloof veteran Muhammed Abdul Shabazz.
I’d think the faux-Lakers name would be something like the San Diego Polar Bears.
You have correctly deduced that coming up with the fake names was the part of my comment that took the longest. 😀
Because every society on Earth tells stories about their legends, and the stories grow in the telling.
Sure, but if you were still alive and someone was getting it all wrong, that would fucking hurt. It can also be harmful. What’s stopping Kurt Cameron from making a 1/6
“docudrama” that’s just lies?
If it’s got great big “this is a fictional story based on true events” bumpers, he can do that. If that bothers you, remember how Trump tried and failed to censor things as president. Feature, not a bug.
Yeah but if it says “this is a fictional story based on true events” it should portray any actual events generally how millions of people saw them. It bothers me on the level of .5 on a 10 scale, but I do empathize with people it’s portraying. Especially if it’s a game result.
The portrayal of Jerry West bothers me WAYYY more than a game result. Who cares if they won or lost against the Clippers in a particular contest? The overriding feeling (“we have not proven ourselves, and this experiment might not work”) is much more important from a story perspective.
As for Jerry West, I watched the show before knowing anything about him and I took it as fact that he was a Herb Brooks clone. Reading more, that doesn’t seem to be the case, and I regret not questioning the material as I consumed. I’m sure I’m not the only one.That said, I understand why they did it this way, because the story works better if someone in authority is initially skeptical of Magic Johnson, especially if it’s someone the audience likes (anger issues aside, West is absolutely presented as someone for the audience to root for), and the audience is already primed to understand “passionate coach with depression and anger issues” as a character archetype. It sucks for Jerry West, and I think they shouldn’t have done it.
At the end of the day, anyone who wants can go read “Showtime,” and I think the value as a piece of entertainment (it really is very effective as a slice-of-life portrayal of the late 70s) probably outweighs whatever inaccuracies exist about the subjects. But to me, that’s the real debate, not whether it’s okay to alter minor facts that are unimportant to the larger narrative thrust.
I think you’re seriously overestimating Kirk (ironic you should get his name wrong while complaining about inaccuracies) Cameron’s ability to sway people who don’t already agree with him.
“(ironic you should get his name wrong while complaining about inaccuracies)“It’s a comment section. We matter about as much as our comment costs to post :p
Because every society on Earth tells stories about their legends, and the stories grow in the telling.Like that one about Jesus.
I get that Turturro knocked it out of the park, but the character hardly needed his own movie.
as I watched this and saw the very unflattering way they portrayed The Logo and Kareem I thought, wow the producers are making that disclaimer at the beginning do a LOT of heavy lifting LOL
yeah like i said it doesn’t necessarily bother me, but it is funny. it’s one thing when they condense a timeline or make a composite character in these things, but just being like ‘well, it would be better for the story if they lost that game’ just seems…silly.
Yeah, “it’s only a movie.” But they can still defame people.
Take ‘em for everything you can, JW! Don’t fuck with the LOGO.
Depending on how close the current Lakers organization is with this, it’s pretty fucked. Jerry West is one of those guys that’s a class act who came from nothing in West Virginia to become the logo for the league. The team’s been doing all kinds of petty bullshit lately, including canceling his season tickets by texting his wife. This isn’t how you treat one of the good guys.
Rich old white dude butthurt. Damn shame.
Considering the people producing this show are also old white rich dudes, I’m not sure this is particularly relevant.
Just like that famously rich, butthurt, old white dude Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who said pretty much the same thing and has Jerry West’s back.
You misunderstand. I have no idea to what extent the show is accurate or not, I just don’t care what Jerry West thinks about it. Or
Isn’t that Johnny Cash as your avatar?
(Not a lawyer but I have done some research on the subject)
The various and obvious inaccuracies in the show would actually serve to
help the filmmakers prove that there was no defamation in the event of
legal action from Jerry West. It could be argued that because the events of the show differ significantly from actual events that no reasonable person would consider this an accurate portrayal of West. Therefore no defamation would have occurred.
I would bet anything Jerry and Kareem are angling for a lucrative EP credit now that the show has been renewed for another season. as a lawyer (albeit not one very familiar with defamation) your defamation analysis is pretty good but if I were writing this out as a law school exam question, I’d ask how much protection Jerry West is afforded as a “famous person”, and alternatively from his perspective I’d argue that mixing lies with truths is even more damaging to his reputation (because a “reasonable person” like myself might not be able to discern fact from exaggeration or outright lies).
I’m fairly certain the solution is to have the Jerry West character make mention of his incredibly small penis. He should probably mention it multiple times throughout the series, just to be safe.
Jerry West was so upset with how he was portrayed on the show that he snapped his golf clubs and threw his MVP trophy across the room
MVP comment!
and then as the chaser he slept with a woman he met at a wake LOL
If the “dramatization” is really just fiction – or even that 2nd-lowest form of fantasy, Fan-fiction – why not just make it entirely fiction?Because they can steal the work of others AND insult them as well?What’s not to hate?
I love, love the scene where the show Jerry West is explaining to Norm Nixon because after drafting Magic (West apparently wanted to draft Sidney Moncrieff instead) the new owner Jerry Buss has promised to let West make all the basketball decisions, so they were going to finally have a great season. And Nixon politely but incredulously confirms that yes, West believed that what was holding the team back was that he didn’t have enough control.
Not quite sure how you retract a portrayal in a TV show.
In the case of a billionaire here in Australia named Gina Rinehart, win a court case and somehow after that manage to ensure that the dramatisation made of your life will never been shown again by the people who made it. I don’t know how she did it but she did somehow.
For me, if I’m watching something based on a true story, it’s got to have a certain level of accuracy to it. Not word for word but I should feel the events and people are by and large as they were, otherwise it’s just disinformation and leaves me less knowledgeable on the subject than I was before. The more I read about this thing, the more I’m convinced it doesn’t live up to that relatively low bar. Pass.
This genre of TV, which has all of a sudden become so prevalent, is gross. Honestly Winning Time has been very well done, yet it still suffers from the same things that Dr Death, Waco, The Crown, Pam & Tommy, etc… etc… suffer from, Fabrication, speculation, and conjecture. Even a series as well done and celebrated as Chernobyl has massive and glaring issues in pushing embellishments, or complete twisting of reality, as facts. Honestly just wondering when this level of blending fiction and non-fiction, and selling it as a true story became so socially acceptable. Literally had a conversation with a friend about Ukraine/Chernobyl the other day, death from radiation came up and they were basically using the series as fact, in how quickly death can occur after radiation exposure. This sort of entertainment is dangerous, it spreads ignorance and disguises it as fact…
Selma did it in a pretty gross way also to make LBJ satan
You think taking liberties in entertainment that’s based on a true story is a recent thing? Never heard of Braveheart before? Or Bonnie and Clyde? The Last King of Scotland? Hoosiers? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? Lucas? Good Morning, Vietnam? The Sound of Music? Battleship Potemkin? Any movie about the gunfight at the OK Corral? Just a few of the hundreds of fact-based movies that are mostly bullshit, many of which are pretty highly regarded in spite of that.
The last episode with the Christmas road trip was the peak of inaccuracy. In the show it was indicated this was the first road trip for Magic. Considering they are two months into the season at that point it would be pretty ludicrous if the Lakers had not been on the road yet. The focal point of the episode was the game at Boston. LA actually hosted Boston the first time they played that year. Before the coaches bike accident they made it seem like they were an unstoppable machine when the Lakers record at the time was just a solid 9-4. Their record after his accident was 51-17, a tremendous record. If I was Jerry West or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar I would be upset with my portrayal too if it was inaccurate as it is.
the show has been on for 7 weeks and he (and Kareem apparently) are finally getting word that they’re coming off as grumpy, moody jerks? LOLbased on this and the timing of the renewal (which was a bit odd, I thought this was spun as a “limited series”, i.e. one season), I wonder if someone is angling for an EP credit for season 2?
So Adam McKay lost one of his oldest friends (Will Ferrell) over casting, then he gets attacked from all sides when the show actually premieres. I’m starting to think he shouldn’t have bothered making the show.
Anything that hurts a Laker past, present or future is a good thing.
there’s one small detail that is missing from all of this: a LEGAL basis to demand any reliefAlthough it’s pretty funny that Jason Clarke maligned Teddy Kennedy and now Jerry West, it’s like he’s the Australian Terminator of reputations