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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
29
Mixed:
12
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
Mar 4, 2022
Aug 3, 2023
Season 2 Review:
Overall, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty returns with a solid and, in some ways, even more captivating follow-up that comprehensively sums up a large chunk of basketball history. And in a TV landscape where the amount of sports dramas and documentaries is ever-growing, that’s an impressive accomplishment.
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Mar 7, 2022
Season 1 Review:
It bites off more than it can chew by taking on too many characters. We follow more than a dozen characters through a flurry of flashbacks and strange psychological detours, explaining how this parade of damaged men came to be so damaged. (It’s ten episodes, but it could’ve easily be six, or even four.) Its dynamic style and the intriguing personalities involved help it rise above all of that, though.
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The IndependentMar 29, 2022
Mar 4, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Perhaps what is most notable and welcome about “Winning Time” is its sheer sense of fun. ... While too many dramas today take viewers for granted with self-indulgent, drawn-out storytelling, through its first four episodes, “Winning Time” smartly builds each episode to a cliffhanger crescendo that, even with full, one-hour running times, leaves viewers wanting more.
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Feb 28, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Its breakneck pace and flashy mix of genre-bending elements combine to craft a series that’s difficult to look away from and impossible to ignore. HBO’s latest Sunday night offering isn’t so much of a layup as it is a slam dunk, delivering a fun, glitzy origin story of an iconic NBA dynasty.
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Mar 7, 2022
Season 1 Review:
The team doesn’t even play their first game until midway through the 10-episode season, and like so many other shows, there’s some drop-off in momentum after the first few episodes. But this collection of egos is never not interesting, forever colliding in ways fascinating and strange, comedic and fraught. Game on.
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Mar 3, 2022
Season 1 Review:
“Winning Time” is like those vintage Lakers on a fast break: quick-moving, freewheeling, creative, packed with colorful characters and occasionally rising to the level of art. It is also a foul-mouthed and sex-fueled titanic clash between alpha male super-egos (and some alpha females as well).
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Mar 3, 2022
Season 1 Review:
For all the off-the-court shenanigans, “Winning Time” is primarily about the basketball, and the writers display a keen knowledge of the game whenever McKinney, West, Westhead, Riley, et al., are strategizing. As for practice and game sequences, the actors are convincing enough, with considerable assists from camera angles that make them appear NBA-sized and slick editing that no doubt compensated for shortcomings.
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Feb 28, 2022
Season 1 Review:
There’s not enough depth there to transform the series into more than a rich snapshot of Los Angeles and the sporting world at a particular moment. Bigger issues are examined through some of the characters, but Kareem’s religious and ideological concerns or Jack McKinney’s obsession with the game’s mathematical purity, for example, take Winning Time only to the point of being an entertaining, if familiar depiction of complicated masculine genius.
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The PlaylistJul 31, 2023
Aug 4, 2023
Season 2 Review:
Mostly, “Winning Time” reminds us that big stars often possess even bigger egos and fragile, easily wounded feelings. Yet the many good things about the series – from the performances to the basketball sequences, which feel as if they too have upped their game – would be so much better if the producers just dialed down the snark and salaciousness a few notches.
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