The story of the Showtime Los Angeles Lakers is one for the ages. Even though the era began over fourty years ago, spanning the entire 1980s, sports enthusiasts today still can’t hear enough about how Pat Riley coached Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Co. to five NBA championships.
Thankfully today, we have HBO producing Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty to help tell the story for anyone who didn’t get to live through the historic time in basketball, and for others who just want to take a trip back in time to relive the glory days.
Winning Time, based on best-selling author Jeff Pearlman‘s book Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s first debuted last year on HBO with a total of ten episodes.
The season was a resounding success, with star actors like John C. Reilly, Jason Clarke, Adrien Brody, and Jason Segel leading the cast. But once the first season concluded, it left viewers desperate for more.
Just five episodes in, HBO realized what the gold they had on their hands, renewing Winning Time for a second season back in April 2022. Production later started in August.
Now, we have finally learned when season two of Winning Time will begin airing. According to HBO, Winning Time will start streaming season two on August 6 at 9 PM ET. In fact, it’s taking over the time slot of another wildly successful HBO series Succession, which had their series finale on May 28.
Season two will resume where season one left off, right after the 1980 NBA Finals, where we’ll be introduced to ‘The Hick from French Lick’, otherwise known as former Boston Celtics superstar Larry Bird.
Sure, some members associated with the Lakers have been outspoken about how the series inaccurately portrays certain individuals of the then-team, but the show was never meant to be a perfectly accurate re-telling. As HBO tells it, the series has been “fictionalized in part for dramatic purposes” and should not be viewed as a documentary. Meanwhile others in the sports community continue to count down the days until season two gets underway.
Related: 4 ideal Fred VanVleet landing spots in NBA free agency, including Los Angeles Lakers