Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Is the Latest Basketball Legend to Trash HBO's Winning Time

NBA icon Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is not a fan of HBO's Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty—and that's putting it mildly! See how Kareem absolutely slammed the show.

By Daniel Trainor Apr 19, 2022 10:02 PMTags
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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has wiped the floor with Adam McKay and HBO's Winning Time.

The NBA Hall of Famer did not mince words in an April 19 blog post about the show, which chronicles the '80s era of Los Angeles Lakers basketball. 

"I'll start with the bland characterization," the former Lakers star wrote. "The characters are crude stick-figure representations that resemble real people the way Lego Hans Solo resembles Harrison Ford. Each character is reduced to a single bold trait as if the writers were afraid anything more complex would tax the viewers' comprehension."

The basketball legend, who spent 14 years with the Lakers, did not stop there.

"How was the plot constructed?," Kareem asks. "If you gathered the biggest gossip-mongers from the Real Housewives franchise and they collected all the rumors they heard about each other from Twitter and then played Telephone with each other you'd have the stitched together Frankenstein's monster that is this show."

We did not wake up today expecting Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to reference the Real Housewives, but here we are! Isn't life exciting? 

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Kareem says he was caught off guard by the show's quality, given the pedigree of those involved, especially Adam McKay, whose many credits include executive producing Succession.

"There is only one immutable sin in writing: Don't Be Boring! Winning Time commits that sin over and over," Kareem said. "That surprised me because Adam McKay is one of the producers and he directed the first episode. Anyone familiar with McKay's work can see his stylistic influence in the entire series. I generally am a fan of McKay's work—The Big Short and Vice are wonderful—except for the bloated and obvious Don't Look Up. I thought the poor quality of Don't Look Up was an anomaly."

The six-time NBA MVP does make it clear that he doesn't necessarily object to his portrayal on the show. Former University of California, Berkeley basketball player Solomon Hughes plays Kareem on the show.

Leon Bennett/WireImage, Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for HBO

"My response to the show has nothing to do with how I'm portrayed," Kareem said. "I'm 75, folks, and have been dealing with positive and negative descriptions of me for 55 years and I long ago accepted that it's just part of the celebrity gig. There's very little that anyone can say about me—whether it's true or false—that will affect my life."

May we all aspire to be as zen as Kareem.

He's not the only Lakers legend who has spoken out against Winning Time, either. 

"First of all, you can't do a story about the Lakers without the Lakers," Magic Johnson told Variety in an April 5 interview. "The real Lakers. You gotta have the guys."  

Magic, who is the focal point of Winning Time's first season and was the catalyst for the Lakers' success in the '80s, said he refuses to watch the show because nobody from the squad itself was asked to participate. 

Heed their warnings or make up your own mind when Winning Time airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.

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