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For a show that likes to make up bad stuff about people, it's kind of funny to me how positive the portrayal of Jeanie Buss is. My impression is that she's generally regarded as a good or great team owner who's well liked, but playing the unappreciated talent thing up for the boss's 20 year old daughter seems silly to me. Overall I liked the season a lot, but I do wish it stayed a bit closer to the truth both in terms of individuals and the actual basketball. Like to me either the Lakers in the 80's are interesting enough to make a show about or they aren't, and they shouldn't need to pump in as much artificial drama to keep it going. I don't expect documentary levels of factualness, but I think they went a little too over the top and hope they'll tone it down a little, as they did with some of the annoying camera/fourth wall poo poo after the first episode.
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May 9, 2022 04:05
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 20:15 |
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MrMojok posted:Then of course, Pearlman also wrote another book called Three-Ring Circus, about the Shaq-Kobe years. But this type of serialized sports historical drama would likely have run its course by then. They've optioned that too, so I hope it eventually gets made. I think one stumbling block is that I don't think you can make it without presenting Kobe in a pretty negative light at least some of the time, which is obviously uncomfortable to a lot of people after his death, but maybe by the time they finish up with the Magic years people will have calmed down.
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May 11, 2022 15:32
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Henchman of Santa posted:Yeah it's one thing for Jerry West and Kareem to get mad but Kobe isn't around to defend himself and his fans are loving deranged so it would turn into a whole thing. That's a less diplomatic and more accurate way of putting it than I did. Darko posted:In line with my other post, both eras *kind* of end with unliked Pistons teams destroying those Laker teams (they got another run 4 years after being beaten in the second era, though). I have been here so long I forgot I retired my old account and named myself Darko for calling 2004 Pistons at the beginning of that year, haha. Even beyond the rape case, which is obviously the most explosive part, showing Kobe push out Shaq and Phil Jackson at the end would present him in a pretty unsympathetic light too, though obviously the divorce with Phil Jackson was only temporary. For comparison (I don't know if doing spoilers on real life history makes sense or not, but just out of caution), with the Winning Time Lakers Magic will shove out Westhead (though Buss said he was going to fire him anyway), but Westhead is pretty reasonably presented as a somewhat buffoonish placeholder who's warming up the seat for Pat Riley. You obviously can't do that for Phil Jackson, and it's not like Magic shoved Kareem off the team too. More generally Kobe just flat out didn't have Magic's charisma, and Shaq was easily the more likable of the two (and the better player), so when they stop getting along it's hard to see the show taking Kobe's side unless they pretend he was a totally different person than he was. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 18:30 on May 11, 2022 |
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May 11, 2022 18:24
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the_american_dream posted:I guess this isn’t the thread for it but it’s weird that shaq is somehow underrated historically. Pretty sure he’d dominate literally every other big man all time I think he gets punished for not being as good as he could have been. IMO he was clearly a better player than Kobe (who was himself phenomenal), but as Kobe himself said, Shaq with Kobe's work ethic would have been on another level entirely. I think Shaq bouncing around on different teams toward the end of his career probably didn't help his legacy either, especially in combination with the out of shape and injury prone thing, which maybe took the shine off the years of dominance. On the other hand, Kobe stayed with the Lakers his whole career, and even after he was past his prime, he was still talked up constantly by a media ecosystem that loves talking about the Lakers. Having a massive and exploitable hole in his game when it came to free throws doesn't help either, and some of the excuses about big men not being able to shoot becuase of mechanics look a bit sillier in hindsight.
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May 13, 2022 02:56
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I liked season 1 a lot, but I feel like the complaints people had about the show character assassinating everyone are a lot worse this season, because everyone seems like a miserable rear end in a top hat except Pat Riley. Even Jeanie Buss, who felt like a source in the first season because of how positively she was portrayed compared to everyone else, is just moping around this season.
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Aug 30, 2023 00:37
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Paul Westhead is probably the person being treated most unfairly, because my understanding is that he was seen as a pretty nice guy, even if he really was overly stubborn about The System (which the show has been extremely bad at explaining because it doesn't actually care about basketball). I feel like he's being presented as an insecure narcissist monster so we'll sympathize with Pat Riley and Magic, but Magic's been pretty unpleasant to watch this season too, and the show's barely even making any effort to remind us that he's actually a good player. I'm fine with the show taking some liberties/don't feel a need for the show to have the Lakers' seal of approval, but turning people into cartoons while removing the fun that was way more present in the first season just makes it feel like bad melodrama. Magic learned in the first season that everyone likes him more when he smiles, and I guess I just want to hurry up and get to a part of the show where he's smiling again. I think Jeanie's supposed to feel threatened by someone coming in and stealing her dad's attention, but I feel like it was handled way better with her brothers than with her going all Electra complex about Honey.
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Aug 30, 2023 15:14
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escape artist posted:Well to me, it was an excuse for John C. Reilly to ham it up and it had a very "one season miniseries" feel to me. I liked the first season, it was pretty solid, but it just didn't feel like the premise was enough to sustain a full series So far the second season seems to be proving that point.
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Aug 30, 2023 19:51
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