Amidst all the overwrought performances in HBO’s “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,' Philly provided the saga of the Lakers’ Showtime’s origins with some of its most significant figures and moments.
Perhaps as a sop to those Philadelphians who managed to watch all 10 episodes of HBO’s “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” references to this city were sprinkled liberally throughout, like salt on a soft pretzel.
But most significant, the dramatic conflict at the heart of “Winning Time” was the astonishingly awkward relationship between two other Philadelphians — Jack McKinney, who that season became the Lakers coach after eight years at St. Joseph’s, and Paul Westhead, who left La Salle to become his assistant.
“One of my daughters-in-law texted me,” said Claire McKinney, 85 now and living in Madison, Wis. “She said, ‘I just watched that episode about Jack. It was awful. He was never dour like that. And he never had a pot belly.’ She was right. Jack was never dour. Unless St. Joe’s lost to Villanova.” “I understand that it’s fictionalized pretty heavily,” she said. “But they made Paul look like a kind of puppy dog following Jack around. Really, Paul was on the same level as Jack. He hadn’t coached yet in the pros at that point, but he’d been a good college coach. Jack and Paul were good friends. They shouldn’t have been portrayed that way.
“After they showed his accident, I couldn’t watch any more,” she said. “I didn’t want to see any scenes of him in the hospital. I was there. I knew all about that. It was just too emotional. Susan and I were watching together, and once we saw the episode that featured Jack, we just cried and cried and were so depressed for a couple of weeks. It was just awful to watch. It made everything so fresh and new.
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