Winning Time S2: Balling on a (mind-blowing) budget

Grab your dollars and your egos because it’s showtime, baby! Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty is back with its basketball big bucks, big boys and ballers.  

The LA Lakers team, coaches and owners juggle two supersized chainsaws: money and ego. Both are expensive.  

Winning Time Season 2 starts with the Lakers riding high and the opposing team’s crowd ready to riot. It’s 1984 and victory is sweet, as Lakers owner Jerry Buss (John C Reilly) fulfils his dream of crushing Boston Celtics president Red Auerbach (Michael Chiklis), and Magic Johnson (Quincy Isaiah) gets to dunk on Larry Bird (Sean Patrick Small), the player who beat him to the Rookie of the Year title in the Season 1 finale.  

But that’s the end of this season’s story, and the show takes us back to the start of that journey, to 1980, in the cool-down period after the Lakers won the 1980 NBA Championship in the Season 1 finale. Blood flows on court during practice as rookie Magic and ageing superstar Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Solomon Hughes) clash again over the Lakers’ new fast-break, theatrical playing style. Then Magic faces a potentially career-ending injury, just as Kareem is getting over his own Season 1 finale injury. With Magic on the bench, head coach Paul Westhead (Jason Segel) brings in a new playbook he calls The System, which depends on team play rather than star power. The goal? Get the ball across the court to shoot within seven seconds. It’s a hard sell as it threatens to damage the players’ statistics, and even co-coach Pat Riley (Adrien Brody) is dubious. The team suffers even more strain to their egos as the fans single out Magic as the Lakers’ superstar when he returns, and he refuses to play by the rules.  

Meanwhile in the boardroom, team owners Jerry Buss and manager and talent scout Jerry West (Jason Clarke) butt heads over Jerry B’s suggestion that they secure their dream team by paying all their players astronomical salaries so they don’t get poached thanks to the NBA’s new free agent rules. And Jerry B clashes with his family off court as he works on bringing his sons into the business, regardless of their skill, potential or interest. Jerry continues to sideline his ambitious, hyper-competent 19-year-old daughter Jeanie (Hadley Robinson) in favour of her brothers, shamelessly playing his kids against each other to stoke that competitive spirit. 

It’s going to be an epic season of sports, backstabbing, strategising, showboating and Showtime. And why do they do it? Money, honey. 

Watch the trailer for Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty S2

Wait, what? How much, now?  

In Winning Time: The Rise of the Laker Dynasty’s premiere episode, chemist-turned-property mogul Dr Jerry Buss bought the LA Lakers basketball team – along with NHL team the Los Angeles Kings, The Forum sports and events arena, and a massive ranch in California Sierras – all for $67.5 million. The payment was broken down into $18 million cash downpayment, $37.5 million in property (including the Chrysler Building in New York City, which Jerry owned at the time), and a final payment of $15.75 million, which Jerry’s team had to come up with on the fly.  

In the Season 1 finale, Jerry revealed that he had $80 million sunk in the Lakers. And if he was willing to pay that, Jerry thought he could make a lot more money off the Lakers in the long run, even if he was paying his players and coaches top dollar and throwing in everything from cheerleaders to a live band. Not even the world’s greatest basketball fan loves the game that much! 

Players get paid 

In Season 1, episode 2, the Lakers’ starting boardroom budget for signing all their players for the year was $4.1 million. In real life, the average annual salary for an NBA player for the 1979-1980 season (covered in Season 1) was $173 500. In the 1980-81 season (covered in Winning Time Season 2), it increased to $189 000. And in Season 2, episode 1, we find out that the Lakers are paying player Michael Cooper $35 000 a year, but Jerry Buss announces that they’re going to boost that to $350 000. The Lakers are about to pay their players like Hollywood stars. 

Some were already cashing in before that, though. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's 1979-1980 season salary was $650 000. And in his first season, at the age of just 20, Michael Jordan signed on for a four-year contract at $500 000 per year.  

Even if you’re earning a normal salary in 2023, the amounts being thrown around in Winning Time over 50 years ago, back in 1979-1980, seem outrageous. Added to that, the 1979 dollar had the buying power of $4.26 in 2023. So Magic’s first salary deal? Think of it as being a 20-year-old who lands a job that pays you $2.5 million a year, or R46.5 million. (And if you really want to make your wallet cry, R1 in 1979 had the buying power of R34.20 today).  

Then there were the side deals. In Season 1, episode 6, Winning Time gave us a sneak peek at the Converse sneaker deal that brought Magic an additional $100 000 cash per year in 1979-1980, while episode 7 showed Magic signing on to advertise Buick cars and boasting to his friends and teammates that he and his agent Dr Thomas Day (Steve Harris) are “building Magic Johnson Enterprises” (a private company that Magic really did start, in 1987). In Season 2, episode 1, we see the payoff from the Buick deal, as Magic receives a cheque for $150 000, dated 30 May 1980. 

Throughout Season 1 we saw everyone in the neighbourhood pitching to Magic to become the face of their brand. This was the dawn of the sports celebrity endorsement era that would go on to see players not just competing to win, but to land contracts with the biggest, most exciting household brands, from Coca-Cola to cornflakes. Tasty Ice could never.  

What were they buying? 

Many of Winning Time’s fascinating little moments come from showing how the players spend their money, from the little things like imported cigars, to those big ticket items. In Season 1, episode 1, we saw Magic try to spoil his mama, Christine Johnson (LisaGay Hamilton) with a deluxe new bathtub complete with massage jets. This was 1979, so that was a crazy, cutting-edge tub. She didn’t act impressed, but guess who was boasting to her lady friends later!  

Then it was time for a donation to upgrade the church’s stained glass window, and Magic bought himself a lil Mercedes convertible that brought all the neighbourhood running. And in episode 3, long-time Lakers player Norm Nixon (DeVaughn Nixon, Norm’s real-life son) took Magic under his wing for a head-to-toe Hollywood makeover. Goodbye pelican wing shirt collar, “Field Hand Quarterly” jeans and Ray-Charles-was-your-barber haircut, hello to a full suit from Norm’s own shop, Jerry’s Flying Fox. Magic was looking fly at the red carpet film premiere, and when he hit up LA’s nightlife, from gambling to prostitutes.  

By mid-season, Magic was making enough money for his agent to casually fly to Michigan on his behalf, to hand-deliver Lakers game tickets to Magic’s girlfriend, Cookie (Tamera Tomakili). At the start of Season 2, things are getting really expensive as the first paternity suit drops and Magic is on the hook for child support. Yikes.  

This is Magic at the starting line in his career. There’s so much more to come. His seasoned team captain Kareem owns a $1.5 million two-storey mansion in Bel-Air with customised door frames that he didn’t have to duck through. Insurance at the time valued the contents of the mansion, including a collection of 3 000 jazz albums, at a further $1.5 million. Kareem’s hobbies included buying oriental rugs that cost in the region of R35 000. Budget? What budget! The moral of the story is play ball, y’all.  

Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty is based on Jeff Pearlman's best-selling non-fiction book Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s.