John C. Reilly plays Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss in the HBO series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. Buss recruited Magic Johnson and turned the Lakers around beginning the late 1970s. Although Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was already on the team, Reilly said Buss’s color-blind recruiting paved the way for his success.
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“If we’re going to be frank, his super power was that he wasn’t racist,” Reilly said on a Deadline Contenders TV panel Sunday at the Paramount Theatre. “That was a radical thing to do at the time. The support of the Black community and everyone who spoke at his memorial shows you that I think that was his super power. To really see people, see who they were and what they could contribute and what they were capable of.”
Reilly said Buss also crossed gender barriers by giving his daughter, Jeanie, an executive position.
“Whether it’s his 18-year-old daughter [or] women stuck in administrative positions, he empowered them,” Reilly said. “He could see people. That idea if you can dream it, you can do it, he really lived that. He put everything he had into his dreams.”
Reilly said the HBO production continued Buss’ tradition with diverse talent behind the scenes.
“Even though this show is about sports and entertainment, we’re trying to entertain you, the issues it deals with in terms of Black and white relations, that was some of the deepest stuff for me,” Reilly said. “For me, going to a set and being able to work with African-American actors every day, to have the crew represented by people of color, from top to bottom, HBO did an amazing thing the way they built this show. I felt very honored to be part of seeing those people.”
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Newcomer Quincy Isaiah plays Johnson. For the 26-year-old, Johnson’s future accomplishments were as important as his athletics.
“I just remember Magic just being this huge businessman,” Isaiah said. “I knew him as one of the best basketball players that ever played but I didn’t live through it. So, it was tough for me to understand the weight of what he really did on the basketball court. I knew the weight of what he did in the business world with Starbucks and the movie theaters and being an HIV advocate, just being this superhero. To be able to go back and see how he came to be that person I knew him to be now, as a child growing up, what I knew… I’m just so humbled to be able to just portray a legend at 20 years old when he’s just a kid.”
Winning Time showrunner Max Borenstein said the HBO series will also highlight people involved in the Lakers’ success who aren’t as well known. Jack McKinney and Jerry West are also main characters. Many of them are comeback stories by the time Buss enters the picture.
“America is about second acts,” Borenstein said. “Every one of these guys and women in the show are at a moment where they are going to transform culture. They have no idea. In [West’s] case, he’s thinking about all the regrets and the fact that he wanted to win every one of those years. That’s what haunts you. If you’re a competitor like that, you think about the 7, 8 you lost. He has no idea he has this second act ahead of him.”
Winning Time airs Sunday nights on HBO and has been renewed for a second season.
Check out the panel video above.
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