SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for “The Best Is Yet to Come,” the March 20 episode of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” which is now streaming on HBO Max.
On the third episode of HBO’s “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” audiences are introduced to an NBA figure that even a fair-weather basketball fan should be familiar with. Pat Riley has been a towering force in basketball for more than half of the sport’s professional history, earning 10 NBA championships between his time playing, coaching and serving as an executive. Riley has been the team president of the Miami Heat since 1995, but before that, he helmed highly successful coaching runs with the New York Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers, two other massive NBA institutions.
Yet when Riley (Adrien Brody) first enters “Winning Time,” the destined leader is a far cry from the Armani suits and slicked-back Gordon Gekko hair that have come to define his image. Instead, the 1979 Riley shuffles up to the Forum for a job interview — his ’70s mop billowing in the wind — and is firmly turned away by a security guard who doesn’t recognize him. Riley returns home to a wife (Gillian Jacobs), concerned about the retired ball-player’s stagnation, and sneaks into a garden shed to sulk alone. This is a man entrapped in a textbook third-life crisis.
“I’ve always seen [that first scene] as Riley having an appointment, but that he just wasn’t on a list. It’s a humbling moment,” Brody says in an interview with Variety. “It’s a challenge to be up against a degree of rejection [while trying to] get his foot in the door — not only metaphorically, in that moment… It’s a deep internal struggle of knowing all that he has to offer for the game, and somehow not being able to connect with that. The fact that we know what an amazing journey the man has had in his life makes that moment more poignant, more relatable.”
Things are looking up for Riley by the end of the episode. He lands a gig as an announcer for the Lakers, and reconnects with his old colleague Jerry West (Jason Clarke), who has one foot out the door of the organization. Still, it’s difficult to imagine that Riley has any idea what opportunities are in store for him in the coming weeks.
Here, Brody talks to Variety about his own relationship with the NBA, what he learned about Riley while preparing for the role and how his performance will as the season continues.
Do you follow the NBA? Are you a fan of any particular teams?
Yeah, I like the sport very much. I’m a New Yorker, so I love the Knicks. But I also spend a great deal of time in Los Angeles, so I guess I’m a fan of the Lakers as well.
My condolences for the season.
They’re all fighting. They’re all fighting hard.
When you guest starred on “Succession” last fall, you told Variety that you joined that series because you were already in contact with HBO regarding “Winning Time.” What drew you to playing Pat Riley here?
I ended up speaking a great deal with Max Borenstein, our showrunner. The exciting thing was to learn all about the many challenges that Pat Riley was facing at this point in his life that I wasn’t privy to. Initially, I was just excited about the prospect of jumping into the shoes of someone that I have always held in high regard, but then this opened up a whole new level of understanding of his journey. That’s what the crux of it was.
Riley has a towering legacy across three NBA organizations. How do you separate the Riley that’s inside the popular imagination from your approach to portraying him?
The writing chronicles a very different time in all of these figures’ lives, [the] initial stages of all their careers. It’s a really interesting thing to see someone who’s accomplished so much at that juncture. He had already had a very successful career as a ball-player and he already had a ring in hand. It was about navigating a man’s life in transition and being patient to find the key into the next phase of that journey. That’s really all I wanted to focus on in this initial depiction of life.
Riley is struggling throughout this entire episode; it feels like he spends most of it on the verge of tears.
When I spoke with Max about this, I learned so much more about this struggling phase of [Riley’s] life — this moment of transition between putting a successful ball-playing career to bed and then coming to terms with being retired. This is what athletes face. That was new to me to consider that because I’ve always held Pat Riley in such high regard. He carries himself in such a way that the confidence he exudes is powerful and uplifting. It’s a really wonderful thing to acknowledge that journey.
Are we going to see Riley’s confidence blossom as the series continues?
I hope. God willing, [the series] will have some legs. There is lots of room for Pat to really come into his own. We just have to follow the chronology of the events that took place. But I’m very excited about that evolution.
Maybe the series follows you all the way to the Miami Heat.
Well, I don’t think we’ll go that far.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
“Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO.