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Jerry West, a former Los Angeles Lakers executive, requested a retraction and an apology in a letter delivered Tuesday evening by his legal team to HBO and director Adam McKay for what he called a “baseless and brutal assault” on his reputation in the HBO series “Winning Time,” which our sources received.
“Winning Time” “erroneously and viciously portrays Mr. West as an out-of-control, alcoholic rageaholic,” according to West’s lawyers, who also allege that the character “bears no resemblance to the genuine man.” Within two weeks after receiving the letter, they are asking for a retraction.
“Jerry West’s portrayal in the film “Winning Time” is fiction masquerading as fact – a purposely misleading caricature that has caused the actor severe harm, grief.” West’s attorney, Skip Miller of Miller Barondess LLP in Los Angeles, stated, “Jerry and his family.”
According to sources, HBO’s claim that the show is a dramatization does not absolve the network of responsibility. Former players Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Cooper, and Jamaal Wilkes, as well as Lakers employees Claire Rothman, Charlene Kenney, Bob Steiner, and Mitch Kupchak, who worked with West during the time period depicted in the show, have signed a letter denying that they ever saw him commit any of the rage-filled acts or drink alcohol in the office, as depicted in the show, have signed a letter denying that they ever saw him commit.
Jerry was always professional, even-keeled, and soft-spoken during my tenure with the Lakers as a player and in the front office,” Kupchak recounted. HBO and the show’s writers, according to West’s lawyers, owe him a retraction, apology, and damages since “the show goes out of its way to disparage Jerry West notwithstanding his triumphs as an executive.”
