HBO Cancels Its Best Series
Winning Time is about to become Losing Time after HBO cancels the fan-favorite sports drama. Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty began in 2022 and aired its second season finale Sunday. Not long after the finale, the series creator, Max Borenstein, took to X to lament the unplanned end of the series.
“Not the ending that we had in mind,” Borenstein said, possibly alluding to HBO springing the cancelation news on him at the last minute. The creator further added that despite the show’s cancelation, he has “nothing but gratitude and love.” Meanwhile, Winning Time‘s director, Salli Richardson, chose to voice her opinion on Instagram.
The cancelation possibly could stem from Winning Time‘s falling ratings.
When you give it everything you’ve got,” wrote Richardson, “you can have no regrets.” The director went on to say that she hoped everyone enjoyed the last episode of Winning Time and stated that she plans to do “many more hours of TV” and hopes to parlay her television career into a job directing feature films in the future. Despite remaining optimistic about what’s to come, Richardson did say that at the moment she was posting, she was proudest of the work she did on Winning Time for HBO.
The cancelation possibly stems from Winning Time‘s falling ratings. The second season premiere aired on August 6 and only brought in 629,000 viewers. That includes the number of people who watched the premiere on HBO’s recently rebranded streaming service Max and those who watched on cable television. The number is far lower than the 901,000 viewers who watched the Season 1 premiere back in March of 2022.
The HBO series’ second season focused on the end of the 1980 NBA Finals and the years that followed up through 1984.
The number also falls short of the 1.6 million people who watched the Season 1 finale the day it aired. It’s important to note that the first season may have benefited from airing during March Madness, a time when basketball has completely taken over the minds of many sports fans—Winning Time‘s target audience.
Even without the benefit of March Madness, HBO execs were probably expecting Season 2 of Winning Time to retain a larger audience than it did.
The series was based on the book Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s by author Jeff Pearlman. The HBO series’ second season focused on the end of the 1980 NBA Finals and the years that followed up through 1984.
Celtics.
Even a cast that boasted such big-name stars as Adrien Brody, John C. Reilly, Michael Chiklis, Gillian Jacobs, and Jason Segel wasn’t enough to save Winning Time from HBO’s axe.
The season climaxed with a rematch between two of Basketball’s biggest names at the time, Magic Johnson, played by Quincy Isaiah, and Sean Patrick Small’s Larry Bird of rival team, the Boston Celtics.
Even a cast that boasted such big-name stars as Adrien Brody, John C. Reilly, Michael Chiklis, Gillian Jacobs, and Jason Segel wasn’t enough to save Winning Time from HBO’s axe. At one point last month, Pearlman himself went on X to stress the importance that people tune into the show based on his book.
The author stated that the show needed viewers and that “The future of Winning Time hangs in the balance.” Pearlman called the ongoing WGA and SAG strikes “crippling” but failed to relate how that had anything to do with the decline in viewers between Season 1 and 2.
Winning Time is just the latest victim of HBO’s new “Everything must go” policy, a result of parent company Warner Bros. Discovery‘s recent firesale mentality. Stay tuned because the casualties are sure to keep coming.
