The last episode is overly preachy with some over the top Black Lives Matter claims and a sleazy marketing focus on activism. You know LeBron by now, all pro China yet claims a moral high ground. Which is a shame as the rest of the episodes are really great. I have not watched a single basketball game, but I can enjoy great storytelling with plenty of photos and recordings of the events. For NBA basketball, a sport with very few teams, it's very easy to make amazing documentaries as fans record everything. You have a ton of recordings and photos of each single event and plenty of newspapers and pundits talking about the drama. There are plenty of top tier NBA docs and this is yet another one. This one is just very well-produced by a famous director. I have watched 9 of his movies and one of his TV shows. Most were terrible to mediocre, but once in a while he makes something great and it's worth digging through the trash to find the good stuff like this TV series.
We follow the LA Lakers from the moment they are bought by Dr. Buss. So we actually don't get their full story as the main people here are the Buss kids who are all talking heads making it all very personal. The youngest daughter was obsessed with making her daddy proud and did everything for him like running the stadium, the Forum. The 2 oldest sons were put into extremely powerful positions time and time again and screwed up. Seemingly it was interesting to be in power, get plenty of fans, and use the power to party in clubs and meet girls. They weren't really interested in the work and would turn up late and overall complain about long work hours. One son got to run the soccer team then felt it was too stressful and left and they went bankrupt. Years later he got to run the women's basketball team and they got the top players in USA and won the league twice in a row then he quit too as it was too stressful yet again. Then the team was sold off as there was no one to run it. The other son was brought in from the outside to be responsible for player acquisitions by getting trained by the player who is actually in the NBA logo, Jerry West. He was put into power without any experience and as soon as his dad died he started to mess up and make mediocre transfers. Which is costly when wages are hundreds of millions dollars. Out of nowhere we find out the sister actually has the power to fire him now. And so both the brothers sue her as they want access to the team even though they are all way below par and can't actually run such a big franscise. It turns into a giant mess.
First the playboy father buys the team back when NBA was not profitable. Lakers vs. Celtics, Magic vs. Bird are a huge deal and slowly grow NBA. Jordan later on grows it even more. The teams turn into empires. Yet Dr. Buss only has his party animal kids to put in charge and it's clearly not structured well. Even the daughter seems way in over her head, but she was smart enough to mainly be a social role in the organization and avoids all the sport stuff she doesn't understand. The 2 sons were put in charge of the sport departments where their incompetence would be fully clear so they were bound to lose out ot her. She basically positioned herself into a role that can't really be judged. Even though in her interviews she seems overly emotional, childish, hateful, jealous, and not fully mature she does say that her role is to talk to people on the phone and just be a part of the social setting and make big decisions. She often, just like her brothers, makes decisions based on egotistical emotions. Dating the coach, getting into Playboy, keeping a bad coach for a long time because she likes him, getting sad and angry when the sport department doesn't rehire her boyfriend. It does look like she's quite clueless, but this is sports for you. Many of the other managers are former players with just as little know-how or intelligence. It makes for good drama as all the kids are willing to whine directly on camera for some reason. Guess it's Hollywood.
All this family drama is just what it ends on. But in reality we get a ton of sports stuff and good basketball scenes. I did notice how they skipped actual storytelling. When Koby dies we just get a few talking heads. We never hear why he died or what happened in the crash. That's the case for many other events. They are just mentioned by talking heads, but there are no experts to expand on this stuff so you kinda need to already know the main stories to understand the documentary. There are plenty of scenes where they celebrate a championship and then right away they show a new game and a new championship. Unless you already know how the league is structured this will only confuse you. They never take the time to explain any rules or regulations whatsoever. So you kinda need to know this already. Basically, the talking heads make this an emotional story. But it is lacking on facts and stats.
