Lakers

On a night where they needed him most, LeBron showed up in a big way for the Lakers.

There was a moment in the first quarter that seemed to change the course of the game early. And he dominated the Warriors, leading the Lakers to a 124-116 victory. But a late surge from Los Angeles and a little help from LeBron James helped them to capture their 28th win of the season.

In HBO's new drama about the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers dynasty, John C. Reilly, Jason Clarke, and Quincy Isaiah make a hell of a show out of Showtime.

That series would be equivalent to the glow-down we saw in Peacock's Bel-Air, which was so desperate to be capital-P Prestige that it sucked the fun and heart out of what Will Smith and co. McKay and the team behind the production are right to drive over the speed limit in their recreation. Not everyone's a fan of the joke, though—especially the people who actually suited up for the Lakers back then. Winning Time, which stars the likes of John C. Reilly as the late Lakers czar Jerry Buss, and Jason Clarke as a wound-extremely-tight Jerry West, adds a little Adam McKay (who produces the series) flair to the historical record. Clearly, we're not supposed to assume that the true story behind it all, which saw Magic Johnson win five championships with the franchise, actually looked like what we saw on Sunday night: a jockified version of Succession. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar added, “the story of the Showtime Lakers is best told by those who actually lived through it.” (No comment yet from Jeanie Buss, the current Los Angeles Lakers owner and daughter of Jerry.) As for critics, the series has received a largely positive response, though the over the top showmanship seems to have struck a nerve.

Frank Vogel is feeling the pressure to demote Russell Westbrook, with a push coming from within the Lakers organization to play the superstar off the bench.

And that’s where we’re at with Russ. Is there a path where that’s the better option? Westbrook has struggled to play without the ball in his hands and mesh with LeBron James and Anthony Davis in a star-studded lineup. The Lakers’ blockbuster deal for Westbrook has been a disaster, with the team falling below .500 and the mercurial star at the center of many issues.

The 37-year-old turned back the clock, pouring in 56 points for his highest-scoring game as a member of the Lakers, and the third-highest scoring game of his ...

hahah austin reaves banks in a heave to beat the shot clock. he hits both to give him 56 on the night just the fourth player in nba history to get 50 points after turning 37 years old. They're allowing 114.9 points per 100 possessions in their last 10 games, and let the Lakers do pretty much whatever they wanted for most of Saturday night. All of a sudden they've fallen to third place in the West behind the surging Memphis Grizzlies, and if they don't get it together quickly, they're going to have the Utah Jazz and Dallas Mavericks in their rear-view mirror. The Warriors got off to a flying start this season, opening up 18-2 to signify to the rest of the league that they were back as a title contender. Russell Westbrook's tenure with the Lakers has been a borderline disaster and could be approaching a tipping point. This was a truly incredible showing by LeBron and another reminder that he's still one of the league's premier players. After he made the first two, it was obvious he was searching for room to get off another one, and Jeff Van Gundy on the broadcast said it was a mistake. The two teams went back and forth all night long in a highly entertaining matchup that the Lakers eventually won, 124-116, snapping a four-game losing streak, thanks to a dominant performance by LeBron James. The 37-year-old turned back the clock, pouring in 56 points for his highest-scoring game as a member of the Lakers, and the third-highest scoring game of his career. He also became just the fourth player in NBA history to score 50 after turning 37 years old, joining Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Jamal Crawford. He got off to a terrific start, outscoring the Warriors by himself over the first five minutes, and never looked back.

Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James finished with 56 points and 10 rebounds in a crucial 124-116 victory over Steph Curry and the Golden State ...

He is averaging 29.4 points, 8.1 rebounds and 6.2 assists per game this season. "I love getting my guys involved, I’ve always been that way." "It p----- me off."

This thought entered my mind repeatedly while watching HBO's Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, the first episode of which premieres this Sunday.

Given that the show has signaled that it’s going to end in 1991, and that the Lakers won four more titles after 1980, and that the Showtime era’s third-most-famous player, Hall of Famer James Worthy, wasn’t even drafted until 1982, focusing so much on the earliest days of the dynasty is an odd choice. McKay recently gave an interview to Vanity Fair in which he disclosed a falling-out with longtime friend and collaborator Will Ferrell over the casting of the show. The show’s approach to sex—and there’s a lot of sex—feels similarly disjointed. This brings us to perhaps the most flummoxing aspect of Winning Time, which is the question of whom exactly it’s for. For a series about one of the most famous basketball teams in history, Winning Time shows remarkably little actual basketball. Winning Time has plenty of boobs and butts and people saying “fuck” to each other, but its historical inquiry never gets much more complex than “remember when?” The show’s fourth episode attempts to bring a critical eye to Buss’ womanizing, but it rings hollow after all the ogling of naked women the show itself has indulged in up to that point. All of this is a shame, because beneath all the hyperactive razzle-dazzle, Winning Time boasts a handful of terrific performances, starting with Quincy Isaiah, the screen newcomer cast as Magic Johnson himself. Reilly is a famously versatile performer, equally at home in comedic and dramatic contexts, but expecting him to do both within the same role is a high-wire act that requires a much better script than he’s given here. Compounding the tonal and storytelling inconsistencies of Winning Time is how the show actually looks. It’s a show about one of the most interesting subjects I can imagine that seems to fundamentally misunderstand what actually makes that subject interesting. So many different characters break the fourth wall and address the camera, and so frequently, that the show’s narrative coherence is undermined from its opening minutes.