Jack McKinney

Episode 5 of 'Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty' depicts a crucial moment for the team. Here's the true story of Jack McKinney's bicycle ...

The repercussions from the accident almost certainly had an impact on the next few years of Showtime. (At least.) We'll keep this story updated as Winning Time starts to reveal the future of the relationship between McKinney, Westhead, and Pat Riley going forward. (You can read what Solomon Hughes, the actor who plays Abdul-Jabbar, had to say about the episode here.) And at the end of this week's dramatics? Just when you think the offensive mastermind averted crisis, he stumbles on the street, falls off the bike, and hits the pavement.

Fact-checking the latest episode of HBO's "Winning Time," from that shocking ending with Jack McKinney, to Jerry Buss and the Forum Club, and those Paula ...

Everyone and their mama was trying to get in, trying to get with the Laker Girls. They could have opened that place alone, just as a club.” “I’m gonna get you.” A few weeks later, while Cooper was sleeping on a Northwest Airlines flight from Detroit, Abdul-Jabbar tiptoed up to his seat and placed a dollop of Nair atop his miniature Afro. “All of a sudden Coop wakes up, screaming from the burn,” said Gary Vitti, the Lakers’ trainer. “His head is burning, and he has a nickel-size hole in his hair, where he was bald. He was unafraid of confronting the big man.” A lot of the players will tell you they couldn’t even concentrate, they wanted the game to end ASAP so they could go upstairs. “We’d rush to the locker room, change and rush into the Forum Club,” said Clay Johnson, a backup guard. “The Forum Club? Unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable,” said Wes Matthews, who visited as a journeyman guard, then joined the Lakers in the late 1980s. It is still unknown if this was due to a brake failure itself as portrayed in the show, but the end result was the same: McKinney flew over the handlebars and face-first into the pavement. What wasn’t shown in the episode is how much of a destination the Forum Club became AFTER games, let alone before them. When the game began, Buss sat far off the court, in a section near the top of the building. And his wife was using the car for a human and personal relationships class with Cassie Westhead, wife of assistant coach Paul, so Jack and Paul himself opted to play tennis together. The situation was dire enough that only close family was allowed to see him in the hospital, with even Dr. Jerry Buss and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar being turned away.

JACK MCKINNEY made a name for himself in the basketball world due to his up-tempo style of play, but a tragic accident caused his career to derail.In.

In the HBO documentary Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, McKinney's story is told during episode 5 by Tracy Letts, who portrays McKinney. Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty is based on Jeff Pearlman’s book, Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers, which tells the Lakers' story both on and off the court. In April 2022, his story will be told in the HBO documentary Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, and now fans want to know more about him.