Winning Time is calling it a game, will end with second season
Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty just aired its second—and now final—season on Max
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In a heart-to-heart with her dad from Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty’s second season, team owner Jeanie Buss reprimands her old man, saying, “You want the picture in the frame, to pick it up when it’s convenient for you, and to put us down when it’s uncomfortable.” Now, HBO is putting something else down; the channel has announced that it will be ending Winning Time’s winning streak after just two seasons.
Winning Time—adapted from Jeff Pearlman’s 2014 book Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s—has thus far charted the ‘70s and ‘80s renaissance of the beloved NBA team, starting with Jerry Buss’ ‘79 purchase of the franchise and moving through their 1980 NBA finals win to the 1984 matchup of Magic Johnson vs. the Boston Celtics’ Larry Bird in the show’s second season.
In what is now the series’ final shot, Magic Johnson sits in his uniform beneath a running shower. His team has just lost to the Celtics, and, while they’ll go on to be victorious again, it won’t be shown here. “Not the ending that we had in mind. But nothing but gratitude and love,” creator Max Borenstein posted on X in response to the news. (For the record, Meredith Hobbs Coons expressed a similar sentiment in her review of the season finale for The A.V. Club, “Winning Time can’t go out like that, can it?” she wrote. “They’ve gotta give this thing another season.”)
Director and Executive Producer Salli Richardson-Whitfield also chimed in, posting the following statement on Instagram: “When you give it everything you’ve got, you can have no regrets. I hope you enjoy the last episode of @winningtimehbo I am sure I will do many more hours of TV and hopefully many features in my future, but I can say that at this moment in time I am most proud of the work we did on this masterful show.”
Winning Time joins the ranks of other gone-too-soon gems across multiple streamers. The Great just got the ax from Hulu, while A League Of Their Own, was recently canceled by Amazon despite already receiving a second-season order.
25 Comments
I watched the finale last night and that “last” shot of Magic in the shower after the loss was a really great scene and moment. Everything that followed was like a surreal fever dream, and I was convinced they were going to do another meta/fourth-wall record scratch “like we’d really end it like that!” moment.But no, that’s the ending. Unbelievable. That attempt to wrap things up is almost more irksome than the cancellation.
I was hoping we’d actually get to the 90s before the show was over and grapple with his HIV diagnosis and what going public meant (and what his relationship with Buss in the aftermath).
His diagnosis was so central to the pilot, it had to be a core part of the original plan for later seasons.
Full disclosure: I’m a Boston Celtics fan.
This show was FANTASTIC. Absolutely loved it. I thought Quincy Isaiah was a great Magic, loved how the show made Boston out to be the bad guy, loved how they focused on Larry the person (I assume season 3 would have started to show Magic and Larry’s budding friendship), and the portrayal of Jerry West being a maniac was brilliant. I could go on and on… The whole thing was fantastic and I’m sad to see it won’t get more time.
The show’s version of Jerry West was my favorite character, this haunted, tragic figure, but also really hilarious because of his maniacal intensity. To me how much the real Jerry West hates the show’s portrayal of him shows that they captured something real about him albeit in a cartoonish way
Amen to this. They did a great job with him, I concur. Watching him slowly lose his mind during game 7 with the little transistor radio was hilarious.
This is just the start. I’m worried about the Gemstones and other shows that may have to wait almost 2 years between seasons as a result of the strike action (I personally don’t see this ending even by the close of Q1 2024; though I hope I’m wrong). The streamers may find it easier to launch fresh content than struggle to reignite interest in long-dormant shows. (I give viewers way more credit than that, but I don’t think the AMPTP execs do.) I think a show like Severance is safe, but anything a little more fringe feels very vulnerable. This includes many shows that are theoretically already approved to return.
I’m most concerned about For All Mankind. We’re now at the end of the jumbo multi-season renewal it got at the launch of Apple+, and going into its fourth season there’s still a dismaying lack of conversation about it.
If it was on another streamer I’d be more worried. Apple seems to stand behind its product. I could be wrong, but you don’t grow a streaming service by cancelling the shows that people actually watch, regardless of whether they’re part of the conversation.
It’s got pretty good advertising behind it, at least on Reddit and a few other spaces I’m in. But yeah – I really hope it keeps going! I know people didn’t like Season 3 because they wanted it to be a documentary and not a character drama, but I still loved it. Can’t WAIT for s4.
They just released a trailer for the upcoming season last week…
Yeah, people who watch it love it universally but it just hasn’t broken through. Maybe it should just be Suits-ed onto Netflix to finally find its people (JK).
What about Yellowjackets? The young women in the cast are already a stretch as teenagers! But I suppose that’s true of most film and tv teens.
Gemstones at least has already been given a renewal. Doesn’t mean they won’t go back on their word and axe it, but for now, its a go.
Yeah, that is always my worry. League of Their Own was renewed and had it pulled. Different show, different platform, but all of these execs are thinking in similar ways. I do think Gemstones at least has some genuine popularity (it feels like the most mainstream thing McBride has done, compared to VPs and Eastbound).
Gemstones came back fine from the pandemic gap!
Listen, I ain’t rooting against it, and you’re definitely right. But the financial hit here has been bigger than the pandemic subscriber boom era.
I think if there weren’t as much 4th wall breaking the show might have felt a little more serious, as it was it just felt light and fluffy, almost inconsequential. The show just didn’t feel as important as it should have, and I think that helped play into the low ratings. The only bits where there were actual moments of what felt like real drama was with Wood Harris in the first season.
When I saw the montage at the end I was pretty worried I knew what it meant. Bloody shame, I was enjoying this series quite well and I’m sad to see it go. Out too soon, just like Rogers and the Jets.
Holding out hope some other outlet will pick it up. Zaslav and Max (or HBO or whatever the fuck it is now) did the show no favors this time around. Debuted the 2nd season in the middle of summer in prime beach whether and also during the NBA offseason, so networks also under the Max umbrella (like TNT, which own NBA rights) couldn’t promote the show to interested audiences. There was no promotion for this season either. And then the strike happened so actors couldn’t promote either. And then they wonder why they had a 30% drop in viewers. Seems like there’s been an outcry about the show today on socials, though it may just be from angry Lakers fans, so maybe there’s a small hope it might come back in the future.If you’re a fan of basketball, its worth checking out. The attention to detail on the in game action is fantastic. They nail the choreography of every big moment shot just as it happened in real life. They even recreated putting fans in the right seat locations. The people behind this show did a top notch job.
Not to mention that even if the numbers were down by 30%, I wonder how much of that rebounds back up over the next few months for the people that now wait for an entire season to be out before they start watching. Streaming makes viewership numbers a mess. I actually know more people now that prefer to wait and binge an entire season than I do that view ANY tv as much-watch viewing on the night or even week an episode is released. I think that’s especially true on a series like this where spoilers aren’t even a real risk to drive people to have to tune in on Sunday.
This definitely ended too soon! Such an odd place for a finale, when the “showtime” Lakers go down in defeat. Should have been another 2 seasons to cover the continuing Bird/Magic rivalry throughout the 80’s, Kareem’s eventual retirement, rise of Michael Jordan and his taking NBA to next stratosphere, Magic’s HIV diagnosis
I’d settle for one more season so it all makes sense. 84 still sees Magic having some doubt and making mistakes, which is real to life. In 85, the dominance starts and they beat the Celtics, and shortly after Bird and Magic film the Converse commercial they both talk about as being a turning point and the formation of a friendship. End it there, and the viewer at least understands why Bird was one for the first to call Magic after the HIV announcement. It really doesn’t make sense as is given how Bird and Magic have been portrayed in the first two seasons. They really did hate each other at this stage of the story.
I’ve subscribed to some version of HBO for almost as long as I’ve been an adult- but they seem super intent on my canceling it, because lately it seems that whenever I invest in a show they cancel it. Time after time they get me to care, and like Lucy pulling away the football it is all for naught. I think in the future I’m going to subscribe on a monthly basis as shows that I give a shit about have had most or all of their episodes aired- like signing up right before the penultimate episode of the Righteous Gemstones so I can binge them all in a week before the final. I’m not saying Winning Time was incredible or even excellent tv, but I liked it and was invested. Serves me right.
“The Great” was a wonderful show, but it ran its course. Ended at the right time.