Spencer Haywood

Spencer Haywood's promising and pivotal career with the purple and gold came to an end before the 1980 NBA Finals. The cocaine addiction had run its full course ...

Looking back in hindsight getting rid of Jack McKinney and Spencer Haywood was for the best. Wood Harris acted his tail off in this episode of— Delegate Marlon Amprey (@marlonamprey) #WinningTime. Maybe the best acting I’ve seen from him. "Wood Harris is killing this role as Spencer Haywood #WinningTime," one of the fans commented. "Listen!!! Wood Harris is just special!! "Give Wood Harris an Emmy immediately. "Wood Harris acted his tail off in this episode of #WinningTime. Maybe the best acting I’ve seen from him.

Spencer Haywood gets cut in a team vote after coming to the Forum high despite promising Kareem he would stay clean through the playoffs. And Jessie Buss' long, ...

This is the way docudrama has always worked — bending the broader framework of a true event to tell a thematically interesting story — and it’s rare that the subjects have a big enough platform to fire back the way West and his allies so consistently have. Jack McKinney, for instance, found out he wasn’t getting his job back not directly from either of the Jerrys, but from his son, John, who got a call from a reporter after Buss announced the decision to the media without bothering to inform Jack first. Winning Time understands that Jerry turned the Lakers into a family business (Jeanie still runs them today, although things have not gone well the last couple of years). Even happy families can’t have everything, and right as Jerry Buss is approaching the idea of the thing he thought he wanted most, he first has to lose his beloved parent. Haywood transcended that prediction, and along the way forever changed the path to the NBA, but there is physically leaving a place and there is mentally leaving it. If he is old enough to have a mother die of cancer, the mental math seems to go, then he’s now too old to act the way that he always has. The story of the show has expanded so much over the course of this season that it can be easy to forget what a crucial part John C. Reilly has been throughout. (Cocaine was a scourge of the league in this period, with the careers of other star players like John Lucas, David Thompson, and Bernard King all being altered or outright ended over their drug use.) It’s not presented as a simple binary, where Haywood turns to cocaine to deal with his marginalization from the lineup, then is able to stay clean when he starts playing again and playing well. Throughout the episode, whenever Haywood is on the verge of using, we see quick glimpses of what appears to be a white overseer on a plantation. It’s an ignoble end to what should have been the crowning achievement of Jack’s career, but there’s no way he was in condition to coach a team on the verge of a title(*). If this season has done nothing else positive, it has hopefully restored his place in the legend of Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the rest. Jack McKinney fails to reclaim his position as head coach once Buss realizes the ongoing extent of his cognitive impairment and chooses to stick with the Westhead-Riley duo over him. They are four wins away from the NBA championship that would rescue Jerry Buss’ financially strapped operation and legitimize everything he and his brain trust have done to shake up the league in the past year.

Winning Time episode 9 takes the Lakers to the NBA playoffs and on a path to the Finals. Here's how the show's events compare to the true story.

This led the show to have the Lakers team vote to have the team waive Spencer Haywood before the NBA Finals. This is not what happened in real life, as Winning Time's true story has a different punishment for Haywood and the timing of the event. However, the true story is that the Lakers blew out the Suns in a 126-101 victory to advance to the Western Conference Finals. It was there that they played the Seattle SuperSonics, whom they also beat in five games. However, Winning Time changes the true story by having him want the entire Los Angeles Lakers team killed. The reasoning for his decision is believed to be partially due to Jack McKinney's health (as seen in WInning Time episode 6), in addition to a fear of shaking up the team in such a significant way right before the playoffs. This put Buss and the rest of the Los Angeles Lakers organization in a difficult position of trying to determine who should be the team's coach just days before the NBA Playoffs began. What happens to Spencer Haywood in episode 9 is one of Winning Time's biggest true story changes. The Los Angeles Lakers' path to an NBA Championship gets a bit easier in Winning Time episode 9 as it is revealed that they received a first round bye in the playoffs. This is where the events of Winning Time episode 9 pick up after, as the team is in the final days of the 1979-1980 NBA season. All of these matters didn't impact the play of the Los Angeles Lakers, though, as they continued their winning ways. Several physicians medically cleared Jack McKinney to return as the Los Angeles Lakers' coach in mid-March of 1980. Meanwhile, Westhead and Pat Riley (Adrian Brody) remained incredibly stressed about whether or not they were going to stay on to coach the Lakers into the playoffs. Winning Time episode 8 showed how complicated the NBA business really is, as Magic learned a few lessons from Julius Erving, while controversy about who should be the Lakers' coach going forward started to pop up.

At least Rothman mentions they can break even on the season if the Lakers make the NBA Finals and don't win/lose right away. Jerry Buss finds out this news ...

• The estate that the Buss family breaks into is the famous Pickfair Mansion in Beverly Hills. Prior to Jerry Buss buying the mansion at a probate sale in 1980 after it had fallen into disrepair, it was home to actors Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. The estate served as home for Buss and his four adult children from his first marriage until he put it on the market in 1986. Later, Kareem seeks out Magic, who is practicing skyhooks in the empty Forum. After a full season of trust-building — and feeling the shame over his decision to boot Haywood — Kareem finally teaches Magic the secrets behind his signature shot, the main weapon used by the greatest scorer in NBA history. But moments later, she has a stroke and is rushed to the hospital, where the doctors tell Jerry that it’s up to him to pull the plug. While he suggests sending Haywood to rehab after the season, he ultimately leaves it up to the players to vote. Earlier in the episode, Grandma Buss tells Jeanie that her father’s poker tell is a twitching of the left eyebrow. While Jerry decides to turn off his mom’s life support after the Western Conference Finals, the team celebrates at the Forum Club. There, Haywood’s drug addiction spills out into the open. But the usually very opinionated West doesn’t want to swing this sword of Damocles. Only when Buss lets down his guard and admits that he’s finally way in over his head does West promise to give it some thought. But Westhead, even after being horribly insulted by his mentor at the end of episode eight, is still too chicken to do so. Back at the Forum, West meets with McKinney to suss out his condition. The penultimate episode of Winning Time’s first season finally answers the question hovering around the back half of the season: Who will be the head coach of the 1979-1980 Los Angeles Lakers when they enter the grueling NBA Playoffs? Fortunately for owner Dr. Jerry Buss, he has a little more time to answer that question because the top-seeded Lakers earned a bye (automatic advancing to the next round of the playoffs) and don’t have to play in the best-of-three first round. He’ll have to decide whether to axe McKinney or the Paul Westhead/Pat Riley coaching team before the playoffs, just a little over a week away. Rothman begs him to hire her, but he rejects it because he needs Jeanie to continue working as a de facto second full-time nurse for his mother.

The toxic relationship between Spencer Haywood and the Lakers was the focal point of the show's ninth episode.

Spencer Haywood did order a hit on Paul Westhead after he was suspended. Paul Westhead instructed the players to decide whether to keep Haywood on the team for the finals or to cut him immediately. According to the Los Angeles Times, after several disruptions and the fact that he fell asleep during team practice, Westhead decided to suspend Haywood indefinitely. According to Haywood in a People Magazine article, the final straw for Westhead was when he got into an altercation with teammates Jim Chones and Brad Holland just after game 3. Did the players honestly vote to suspend Haywood and deliver the bad news through one of their players? Perhaps more crucially, did Haywood decide to retaliate by attacking the entire team?

Did Spencer Haywood really put a hit on/try to kill his Lakers teammates? Winning Time episode 9 suggests he did - let's separate the fact from the fiction.

However, the former Lakers star clarified that he later called off the hit. We would sabotage his car, mess with his brake lining,” Haywood added. Well, there is some truth to the show’s claim but it is not entirely accurate. In episode 8 of the series we see Spencer Haywood (Wood Harris) turning to drugs. “In the heat of anger and the daze of coke, I phoned an old friend of mine, a genuine certified gangster . . . We sat down and figured it out. In the episode we see the Los Angeles Lakers and Magic Johnson make it to the NBA playoffs, which will round of the point guard’s legendary rookie season.

Check Out Winning Time Season 1 Episode 9 Ending Explained Recap Review What Really Happened & What Changed Is Spencer Removed From The Team?

All the loyal fans of the show are desperate to know their answers to these questions. These are some questions that all the loyal viewers of the show are curious to know the answers to. The show is all set to be telecast the finale episode next week.

In Sunday's episode, however, NBA legend Spencer Haywood is cut from the Lakers right before the start of the playoffs because of a cocaine problem. How does ...