Once known as “Captain” of the court during the Los Angeles Lakers’ “showtime” era, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has brought similar heat to his takedown of HBO’s Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. Produced by Adam McKay and inspired by Jeff Pearlman’s book Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s, “Winning Time Isn’t Just Deliberately Dishonest, It’s Drearily Dull,” Abdul-Jabbar headlined his Tuesday Substack newsletter. The record-setting NBA player and author writes that while he initially “had no real interest in watching the show,” what he did see when he finally tuned in “never held my interest enough for me to care, let alone be outraged.” 

Abdul-Jabbar says that his objections to Winning Time have little to do with either its factual accuracy (he’s a fan of Hulu’s historical farce The Great, after all) or the way it depicts him. (Abdul-Jabbar is played onscreen by Solomon Hughes.) “I’ve battled leukemia, heart surgery, cancer, fire, and racism—a negative portrayal of me on a TV show has no effect on me personally,” the 75-year-old writes. But he does take issue with a scene in which the fictional Abdul-Jabbar tells Ross Harris, his child actor Airplane! co-star, to “fuck off.” The real Abdul-Jabbar says this never happened.

But if people come away from the show believing it did, writes Abdul-Jabbar, it could have a lasting impact on his charity, Skyhook Foundation,  which provides access to STEM education to underserved communities. “I realize this was a shorthand way of showing my perceived aloofness during that time, even though I have often spoken about my intense, almost debilitating shyness,” he writes of the “fuck off” scene. “Sometimes the attention in public became so overwhelming I shut down to protect my sanity. The filmmakers had access to that information, but truth and insight were not on their agenda.”

While he’s been a fan of McKay’s other work, Abdul-Jabbar says Winning Time also commits the sin of being boring “over and over” and “suffers from some of the same shallowness and lazy writing” as McKay’s recent best-picture nominated film Don’t Look Up. “How was the plot constructed?” he 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.”

Abdul-Jabbar’s scathing take on the show should come as no surprise to its creators. Magic Johnson has also spoken out against the project, telling Variety, “First of all, you can’t do a story about the Lakers without the Lakers.” (Neither he nor Abdul-Jabbar participated in Winning Time). Showtime’s author disputed Johnson’s comment, tweeting, “This irks the fuck out of me. For Showtime, I took e-v-e-r-y possible avenue when it came to interviewing @MagicJohnson, and was repeatedly turned down. So, hey. Consider the source.”

Solomon Hughes had previously told Variety that Abdul-Jabbar also declined to speak with him about the role: “His team was not interested,” Hughes said. “I’ve been a lifelong fan of who he is. Obviously, there could have been some convenience to getting an opportunity to chat with him. That said, Kareem has been generous with regards to how much he’s shared about his life.”

Later in his Newsletter post, Abdul-Jabbar recommends that viewers skip Winning Time in favor of the AppleTV+ documentary They Call Me Magic and an upcoming Antoine Fuqua-directed Hulu docuseries that was made with the involvement of actual Lakers players. Abdul-Jabbar concludes that he thought Winning Time oversimplified his teammates and coaches. “The issue with Winning Time isn’t so much that the filmmakers deliberately avoided facts as if they were an STD,” he says, “but that they replaced solid facts with flimsy cardboard fictions that don’t go deeper and offer no revealing insights.”

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