Back to the Los Angeles Lakers Newsfeed

Winning Time: How bad did things get with the Lakers after 1981 playoff collapse?

Each week of season two, we’ll be looking back on the newest episode of HBO’s “Winning Time” and fact-checking or adding more details on some of the key and bigger plot points with much of the help coming from the book “Showtime: MAGIC, KAREEM, RILEY, AND THE LOS ANGELES LAKERS DYNASTY OF THE 1980S” By Jeff Pearlman.

When things implode as spectacularly as the Lakers did in the 1981 playoffs, an autopsy is required to figure out what went wrong. Episode three of “Winning Time” was just that as Dr.