#Magic Johnson’s Rivalry With Larry Bird Heats Up in HBO’s ‘Winning Time’ Season 2 Trailer

The escalating rivalry between the Los Angeles Lakers’ Magic Johnson (Quincy Isaiah) and the Boston Celtics’ Larry Bird (Sean Patrick Small) takes center stage in the trailer for the second season of HBO’s Winning Time.

In the footage released Monday from the basketball-centric series created by Max Borenstein and Jim Hecht, the Lakers are looking to build on the success of Johnson’s rookie season, which was the focus of the first season and culminated with the team winning the NBA title in May 1980. The second season debuts Aug. 6 on HBO and Max, and it spotlights the squad’s ups and down from 1980 to 1984.

“Ain’t nobody scared of Larry Bird,” Isaiah says as Johnson in the trailer.

Lakers coach Pat Riley (Adrien Brody) is a bit more concerned about the challenge posed by Bird and the Celtics: “They’re won their rings. We’ve won ours. None of it meant shit ’cause it wasn’t against them.”

The show’s ensemble cast includes John C. Reilly as Jerry Buss, Jason Clarke as Jerry West, Jason Segel as Paul Westhead, Solomon Hughes as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Gaby Hoffmann as Claire Rothman, Hadley Robinson as Jeanie Buss and DeVaughn Nixon as Norm Nixon. Executive producers are Borenstein, Hecht, Adam McKay, Kevin Messick, Scott Stephens, Rodney Barnes, Salli Richardson-Whitfield and Jason Shuman.

In his first-season review for The Hollywood Reporter, chief TV critic Daniel Fienberg wrote that Winning Time “dabbles in alternating photo stock, cheeky title cards, fourth-wall-breaking narration and audacious editing to keep a story told in hour-long chunks from ever dragging, which a series about basketball’s great run-and-gun offense should never do.”

He added, “Sports fans of a certain age are likely to become instantly obsessed with this endearingly wonky examination of a pivotal moment in hoops history.”