Kareem Abdul-Jabbar calls a foul on Adam McKay‘s portrait of the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers in Showtime’s Lakers drama Winning Time. Besides being what Abdul-Jabbar characterizes as boring — a cardinal sin in any entertainment format — McKay’s fictionalization of the the real life Lakers shoots airball after airball, as Abdul-Jabbar sees it.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar doesn’t take it personally, he says, and that’s no surprise. Any reader of Abdul-Jabbar’s exceptional (and well-named) autobiography Giant Steps will recognize that the young Abdul-Jabbar bravely developed an serviceable armor against slights starting very early on.
The painfully shy Abdul-Jabbar created ways to cope with all the attention that came along with pursuing his basketball passion — but such complexity of character is too tall an order, so to speak, for McKay’s project, according to Abdul-Jabbar.
But if Abdul-Jabbar doesn’t take the “shocking moments” of Winning Time personally, he does worry that an inaccurate scene showing his fictional doppelganger cursing at a young child actor will have negative effects on his charity, The Skyhook Foundation, which helps less financially fortunate children.
If Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is perceived as the ogre depicted in the Winning Time scene, it could hurt charitable giving to his foundation and adversely impact children in need, Abdul-Jabbar believes. The scene depicts a movie moment from the 80s-era spoof film Airplane! –which featured Abdul-Jabbar.
“I never said ‘f&%# off’ to the child actor in Airplane!, nor have I ever said that to any child. 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. The filmmakers had access to that information, but truth and insight were not on their agenda. Shocking moments were.”
Magic Johnson, James Worthy, Abdul-Jabbar, Pat Riley — for anyone interested in basketball or anyone even on the periphery of the entertainment business in the 1980s, these stars shone as bright then as movie heavies like Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Jack Nicholson and Molly Ringwald. The showtime Lakers, as they were known, transcended basketball and became synonymous with Hollywood.
But according to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the version of the Lakers in Adam McKay’s Showtime series Winning Time is about as realistic as a Lego Hans Solo.
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