Less than a day after Kareem Abdul-Jabbar blasted HBO’s “Winning Time” series for “crude stick-figure representations that resemble real people the way Lego Han Solo resembles Harrison Ford,” one of the most frequently defended targets on those characterizations, Jerry West, is demanding an apology and retraction from the network.
In a memo obtained by Ramona Shelburne of ESPN, West’s lawyers laid out a litany of issues they took with the show’s characterization of West:
“The portrayal of NBA icon and LA Lakers legend Jerry West in ‘Winning Time’ is fiction pretending to be fact — a deliberately false characterization that has caused great distress to Jerry and his family,” said Skip Miller, a partner at the Miller Barondess, LLP law firm in Los Angeles and attorney for West.