I may have grown up as a Larry Bird-loving Celtics fan, but in the last decade or so, Magic Johnson has become a personal hero of mine. He's a brilliant business man, a wonderful ambassador for the Lakers and the NBA as a whole, and a courageous leader in the fight against HIV/AIDS. I was rewatching ESPN's 10-part Michael Jordan documentary The Last Dance just the other night with my father, and he asked me when Larry Legend would get his own documentary series. I told him that Bird would have to wait in line, …

Newcomer Quincy Isaiah and former UC Berkeley basketball captain Solomon Hughes have been cast as Hall of Fame teammates Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, respectively, in Adam McKay‘s HBO drama pilot about the Showtime-era Lakers. John C. Reilly is set to star as Lakers owner Jerry Buss, the self-made millionaire who transformed the Lakers into a basketball dynasty, sometimes at the expense of those closest to him, while Jason Clarke will co-star as Jerry West, the “cantankerous tortured genius of basketball,” per HBO. West ought to be the perfect man to build the Lakers into …