HBO wrapped up its controversial “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” on May 8.
Oliver Mack
“Winning Time” takes some serious artistic license and is loosely based on the best-selling book Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s by Jeff Pearlman. The HBO original starts with L.A.’s decision to select Earvin “Magic” Johnson with the first pick in the 1979 NBA Draft, and ends with the Lakers winning the NBA Finals over the 76ers in Philadelphia.
Mack, who played college ball at East Carolina, was selected 25th overall by the Lakers as a 22-year-old in that same ’79 draft.
“Absolutely wonderful. A great time to come into the NBA,” said the native New Yorker, who came to Peoria to work at the Youth Farm in 1993. “I had always been a fan of Kareem (Abdul-Jabbar). He was from New York. I was from New York. Also anticipating playing with Magic.
“I grew up watching Kareem playing for UCLA, then the Milwaukee Bucks and going against Wilt Chamberlain and the Lakers. I actually met Kareem at a clinic in my hometown at Astoria, Queens, when I was 10 years old.”
Mack played with Magic during a summer league all-star game in Houston before that ’79-80 season. “That’s when I got to meet Magic and get to know him,” said Mack, who noted he also got to play with “The Ice Man” George Gervin.
Mack was there for one of the first of many legendary Lakers stories about Magic Johnson. “The very first game in San Diego: They had World B. Free, Sydney Wicks, Swen Nater. I was on Injured Reserve while the team sorted out the roster, so I was in street clothes. Kareem takes an inbounds pass and makes a Sky Hook to win the game. Magic runs over and hugs Kareem (“Like they just won the championship,” CBS announcer Brent Musburger said on the call).
That did not play well with the stoic Jabbar, a 10-year pro that day who knew there were 81 more games left to play. “That was Magic,” Mack recalled. “He was so excited — the whole team was excited. We all mobbed Kareem.
“That’s how Magic was from Day 1.”
Speaking of stories, “Winning Time” runs the disclaimer that the show is “a dramatization of certain facts and … some of the events have been fictionalized, modified, or composited for dramatic purposes.” Director Adam McKay has been accused of playing a little too loose with the truth. To be sure, it is not a documentary. It is a TV show on HBO with actors playing the roles.
What is true is that Magic and Mack were not the only new faces for the Lakers. Dr. Jerry Buss (played by John C. Reilly) had just bought the team from Jack Kent Cooke and hired Jack McKinney (Tracey Letts) to succeed Jerry West (Jason Clarke) as head coach.
Player owner
“Different ownership,” Mack said. “Now I was a rookie, so what I will say is from Kareem — he was still on top of his game. But Jerry was much more hands-on than Cooke, who rarely went to home games and went to zero road games.
“Jerry was a different type of owner. Players would go to Jerry’s house. Kareem, Magic and I went to his house on the Sunset Strip and played pool and had a great time.”
While Magic (Quincy Isaiah) and Kareem (Soloman Hughes) and the Lakers team were creating their Showtime style of play on the court, off the floor — and off the record — Buss was starting his own show at the fabled Forum, “Disney meets the Playboy Mansion at the Oscars,” says HBO.
“(Buss) really accentuated that ‘Showtime’ tone,” Mack said. “He loved the Lakers and he loved Magic, and Magic was the exact right ingredient the Lakers needed.
“The NBA was kind of a much-maligned league back then,” Mack explained. “It was going through a lot of changes. From a mostly White league to problems with drugs — they had no drug policy back then.”
“Winning Time” captures that essence with its depiction of NBA veteran Spencer Haywood (Wood Harris), who struggles with addiction and eventually gets kicked off the team — probably not the exact way they say on HBO, though.
“He was a starting power forward, and fading in a lot of ways,” Mack remembers. “He was trying to do too much. I saw a lot of confrontations with the coaches. There was a tension there.”
HBO shows Kareem bonding with his “brother” Haywood, and helping him with his problems, but … “I hung out with Kareem,” Mack said. “Kareem wasn’t really tight with him.”
Magic has said “Winning Time” is “not true,” Kareem wrote a scathing review, and West has threatened to sue. But Chicago Tribune columnist Paul Sullivan compliments it as dramatic junk food, and author Pearlman says “it’s insanely authentic. It’s really, really good” in a Nashville Tennessean interview.
Truth of it all
Speaking of maligned, Mack established a good relationship with Coach McKinney in the summer of ’79. “He watched me at the end of rookie camp and got me into the eighth man,” said Mack, 64, who became a Peoria playground legend in his own right and still boasts a sweet stroke he regularly puts to the test at the RiverPlex. “Jack McKinney made Norm Nixon the shooting guard and really enhanced his game. Norm was an assassin with that pop-up jumper. He taught me a lot.
“Then McKinney had the bike accident.”
L.A.’s coach suffered a serious head injury after the 14th game of the season. He was hospitalized so assistant Paul Westhead (Jason Segal) took over and made radio commentator Pat Riley (Adrien Brody) his assistant. They traded Mack to the Chicago Bulls that February.
“Westhead was running the same system as McKinney, but went to a really tight rotation,” Mack explained. “He was trying to find his way. He didn’t know the NBA.”
“Winning Time” shows Westhead quoting Shakespeare in pregame and halftime speeches, but Mack doesn’t remember it that way. “I do remember he was like a philosopher, but he didn’t do a lot of that stuff. He was kind of like Phil Jackson with the Zen.
“McKinney was on Dr. Jack Ramsay’s staff when Portland won the NBA title, and Dr. Jack was a philosopher kind of guy. Westhead was from Philadelphia and there was a connection between him, McKinney and Ramsay at St. Joseph University in Philly.”
One of Mack’s own “Welcome to The League” moments — on the flipside of carrying the veterans’ bags and bringing them food to their rooms — came during L.A.’s trip to play the hated Celtics and their rookie Larry Bird, who Boston drafted out of Indiana State a year earlier before he squared off against Magic and Michigan State in the NCAA title game.
“I had played against Larry in college,” said Mack, who signed a nice deal with Nike after going pro. “We were the Nos. 2-3 scorers coming into the season when we played in the Stetson Classic.”
The Sycamores won that one. But Mack, who averaged 28 points to Bird’s 30 as juniors, would be winning over Bird in time.
Fast forward to January, 1980: “We fly to Boston and go to the old Garden with its parquet floor. We beat them by two points, Magic has a great game and Kareem was doing his thing.
“We fly home first class — teams flew charter back then — and everybody was dancing in the aisles (‘Magic carried his boombox everywhere’) and having a great time.”
