Former Lakers star, coach and general manager Jerry West has, through his attorney, demanded a retraction and apology over the way that he’s depicted in the 10-part series, calling the portrayal “fiction pretending to be fact — a deliberately false characterization that has caused great distress to Jerry and his family.”
In the statement, West cites a number of former Lakers, both players and those who worked in management, as supporting his contentions.
As one example, Abdul-Jabbar cited a scene in which his character (played by Solomon Hughes) snaps an expletive at a child actor while filming the movie “Airplane!,” which he says never happened.
Magic Johnson has also sought to distance himself from the HBO series and will tell his own story in “They Call Me Magic,” a four-part documentary premiering this weekend on Apple TV+. Another docuseries devoted to the Lakers, similar to ESPN’s Chicago Bulls series “The Last Dance,” is coming to Hulu later this year.
Starring John C. Reilly as Lakers owner Jerry Buss and Quincy Isaiah as Johnson, the series is based on Jeff Pearlman’s book “Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s.”
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