HBO’s ‘Winning Time,’ Perhaps the One and Only Show to Watch on Max Right Now, Canceled After 2 Seasons

Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, has been canceled by HBO after the A-list-casted sports-history drama finished an audience-starved second season Sunday. 

The series had been lauded by critics and influencers of late for its accurate, nuanced portrayal of the players, executives, family members, etc., who had instrumental roles in the transformation to the modern, global NBA. But even accounting for the fact that it was running on expensive HBO linear and Max streaming platforms somewhat stripped bare of late in regard to other sources of programming gravity, Winning Time succumbed to a rather bleak ratings narrative that could not be rationalized into a third campaign. 

Season 2 debuted on August 6, with just 629,000 viewers tuning in across all Warner Bros. Discovery platforms, vs. 901,000 who watched the season 1 premiere in March 2022. 

Also Read: Warner's Wiedenfels Declares That 'Content Needs to Get Oxygen to Stay Alive' (As HBO's 'Winning Time' Gasps For Air)

Over time, season 1 viewership swelled to an average of 1.2 million watchers on premiere nights, increasing to 6 million viewers over time. But the series, created by Alex Bornstein and Jim Hecht and based on sportswriter Jeff Pearlman’s 2014 biography Showtime: Magic, Kareem and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s, declined, at least in terms of audience performance in season 2.

Certainly, Winning Time never appeared on the trajectory of say, HBO’s The White Lotus, which had a similarly humbling start but expanded its audience to well over 9 million viewers by the end of its first season.

None of this is to say the cancellation of the show was not a bummer, especially for Lakers fans who will remain forever stuck in the moment of the Boston Celtics winning the 1984 NBA Finals, perhaps the darkest moment for the 76-year-old Lakers franchise, and the moment in time-space where Sunday’s season 2 finale left off. 

Winning Time had A-list stars to carry its scoring load — John C. Reilly as late Lakers owner Jerry Buss, Adrien Brody as legendary former team coach Pat Riley, Jason Clarke as mercurial-genius team builder Jerry West and Jason Segel as the professorial former Lakers coach Paul Westhead.

But the show’s unique power to surface three-dimensional characters over time emanated from the savvy casting of little-known actors in key roles, including Quincy Isaiah’s breakthrough performance as Lakers Hall of Fame guard Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Hadley Robinson, who deftly upheld her side of a complex father-daughter narrative with Reilly, playing the younger iteration of current Lakers president Jeanie Buss. 

Despite the often overly affectionate, nuanced backstories, Winning Time wasn’t warmly embraced by its subjects — in fact, it’ll probably be best remembered for West lawyering up last year over Clarke’s allegedly “rageaholic” portrayal of him.

But that's a shame. Some of season 2’s best moments included Clarke’s West, a former Lakers Hall of Fame guard himself, perpetually tormented by the games he couldn’t win, providing perhaps the only steady, empathetic guidance Washington’s headstrong Johnson would hear. 

Fourteen episodes in, the series ended Sunday with its characters and their interactions finally laid out and actualized to the point of manifesting real complex, emotional resonance. 

It was the kind of feeling you expect to get when you watch an HBO drama on Sunday night, whether or not you love, hate or are indifferent to the Purple and Gold. 

But in the words of Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, it's been, what, too darned long since Warner has had another Superman. Or Lord of the Rings. Or Harry Potter. 

Time to move on.