‘Winning Time’ Basketball Producer Idan Ravin Says Season 2 Is ‘More Creative’ Than First Season (Exclusive)

Season 2 of the HBO basketball series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty premiered this past weekend, and it looks like fans are going to be in for a wild ride. PopCulture.com spoke exclusively to Winning Time basketball producer Idan Ravin, who explained why the new season will be a treat for everyone. 

“I think if after you’ve done something pretty often, you can raise the bar,” Ravin exclusively told PopCulture. “You can make things more sophisticated, more complex, more cinematic, more artsy. You can take more chances because you know what you … Not that we didn’t know what we were doing, but we know how to do things even better now, and I think season two takes a lot of those moments. It really challenges you and cinematically, some great s—, to be honest, and it’s stuff that you would normally not see and allows you to even be more creative than we were in Season 1.”

After displaying the Los Angeles Lakers’ 1979-1980 season in Season 1, Winning Time will focus on the Lakers from 1980 to 1984, which is when the Lakers’ rivalry with the Boston Celtics was at its peak. This means more intense moments on the basketball court, which is where Ravin comes in as the basketball producer of the series. Ravin, who was handpicked to work on the show by executive producer Adam McKay, says “Anything that sort of falls under the umbrella of anything you even touch upon basketball is my responsibility.” 

Ravin is responsible for getting the actors to become NBA stars which can be challenging. “Most of them didn’t have basketball backgrounds,” Ravin said. “You put enough time in anything, you’re going to get pretty good at it. And these guys put a ton of time in. I remember during the pandemic, we did virtual training and LA had taken off all the rims. They literally were working out on rimless backboards.”

One of the reasons Ravin was chosen for Winning Time is the fact he has trained some of the biggest stars in the NBA and WNBA. But did his teaching methods have to change when training the Winning Time cast? “No, it’s the same ideas, right?” Ravin explained. “It’s just a different person. So remember, you’re in a gym with Carmelo [Anthony]. Yes, he’s at a very, very high level, but also the complexity of his drill requires sort of the same amount of attention anyways.

“So the complexity of what they’re doing is different, but it still requires the same amount of brainpower and proper teaching. I think in some ways it’s a little bit easier with an NBA player because there’s a lingo and there’s a footwork and there’s sort of a natural rhythm that they’ve already developed over 20 years. But these guys, they had to learn sort of everything from the beginning, but at the same time, they didn’t have a lot of bad habits because basketball was sort of new to them. So it was hard and easy and easy and hard, just like with the NBA guys.”

New episodes of Winning Time can be seen on HBO and Max every Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT.