Nobody needs to understand anything about the sport — or like it, specifically — to have a lot of fun with the plot based on real events that the recently launched series on HBO Max has ten episodes, about an hour each. There are now six episodes available, and every Sunday a new one goes on the air.
The protagonist of the story is a businessman of those who could only exist in another era, Jerry Buss, or Dr. Buss, as he prefers. Performed with evident delight by the great John C. Reilly—of “Boogie Nights” and “Chicago”—Dr. Buss smokes and drinks all the time, does opaque deals, gambles and lives surrounded by women he has brief affairs with or even hires as bait for other businessmen he needs to get things he wouldn’t get in a normal meeting.
With auburn hair that he combs from one side of his head to the other, forming a fake fringe that barely hides his bald spot, high-waisted jeans and open-chested shirts, Dr. Buss thirsts for everything. He wants money, power, sex, fame and, above all, to turn the games of the decaying team he buys, the Los Angeles Lakers, as well as the stadium where the games take place, the Forum, into a party.
To make all these dreams come true, your first step is to hire a star. It chooses a huge, smiling kid who had excelled at the college games he attended in Michigan, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, played by rookie Quincy Isaiah. Because he was black, he had been passed over by the Boston Celtics team, which arrived earlier, but opted for another college basketball player who had shone in 1979, Larry Bird, white.
The idea of Dr. Buss was to make Magic Johnson the face of the LA Lakers. He already had in the team the player who is still considered one of the best of all time, the giant Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who measures 2.19 meters tall, played by Solomon Hughes.
He also hired a coach who had developed a way to revolutionize the game, making everything go faster, with lots of baskets, lots of points, lots of passes, lots of everything all the time. What could go wrong?
Almost everything. Veteran players did not agree with the coach’s ideas, especially Abdul-Jabbar, who by then, at 33, already seemed to be tired of the sport. Anyone who knows a little about the trajectory of this athlete knows that this is not a spoiler: Kareem only retired at age 42, after 20 years in professional sport. And the height of his career was precisely the golden age of the Los Angeles Lakers, where, everything indicates, the story of “Time to Win” will end.
Even because, in these first six episodes aired, one situation has already become clear: either the team wins the NBA, national basketball association, the main professional sports league in the United States, or Dr. Buss goes bankrupt.
Produced by Adam McKay, the screenwriter, actor, comedian and director behind such delights as 2006’s “Talladega Nights”, 2004’s “The Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” and, most recently, “Don’t Look Para Cima”, from 2021, in addition to the incredible partnership with Will Ferrell, with whom he founded the comic website Funny or Die, in 2007, “Hora de Vencer” has the same frenetic energy, the short and relentless dialogues and the naughty scenes that mark your work.
The main cast is impeccable, but the supporting cast is not far behind, led by Sally Field as Mama Buss, the controlling mother of Dr. Buss, Adrien Brody as former player and sports commentator Pat Riley, who would go on to become a legendary coach, Jason Segel as an eloquent, insecure assistant and young Hadley Robinson — from “Little Women”, “Moxie: When the Girls Fight “—as Jeanie Buss, the innocent daughter who decides to work with her father and ends up all wrapped up in her dysfunctional family’s business.
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