The word “showtime” evokes 
two images: first, a rising 
curtain, and second, a 12-year 
era (1979-1991) of entertaining 
Los Angeles Lakers basketball. 
“Winning Time: The Rise of the 
Lakers Dynasty” is a gritty HBO 
sports drama with Hollywood 
appeal beyond the Lakers fan 
base. Based on Jeff Pearlman’s 
nonfiction book, “Showtime: 
Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the 
Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty 
of the 1980s,” “Winning Time” 
is a fictionalization of sports’ 
biggest stars with a cast of 
excellent pros and rookies. Just 
remember — it’s all for show.
Andrew 
D. 
Bernstein, 
the 
showtime-era 
team 
photographer, said in a phone 
interview with The Michigan 
Daily that the Forum arena 
spotlight lighting and stunning 
Lakers play made games feel 
“kind of like a stage show.” “I 
really felt my job was to kind of 
show people what was going on 
behind the curtain,” Bernstein 

said. “Winning Time” captures 
the audience just as Bernstein 
did: by providing a look behind 
the glittery curtain (in color 
film). 
Unlike 
Bernstein’s 
photographs, 
however, 
the 
show’s “inside look” is fictional. 
In the late 1970s, the Lakers 
had an aversion to playoff 
basketball, and the NBA was 
one of the least popular leagues 
in America. The team needed 
the shakeup of new ownership 
from late sports and real estate 
magnate, Jerry Buss. John 
C. Reilly (“Step Brothers”) 
portrays 
the 
playboy 
with 
nearly frightening sleaziness, 
making him equally loveable 
and hateable. The actor hits 
every emotion as he battles his 
never-ending money- and sex-
hungry 
dissatisfaction. 
The 
real Buss was a different man, 
a more soft-spoken womanizer 
with a passionate love for 
basketball. 
When 
Buss 
drafts 
the 
scrappy young Earvin (Magic) 
Johnson, played by Muskegon 
Michigan’s Quincy Isaiah, the 
team climbs to the top. Isaiah, 
much like Magic himself, is a 

breakout star from Michigan 
and is guaranteed a bright 
future in Hollywood. Magic has 
not watched Isaiah’s portrayal 
but said that “nothing can 
duplicate” showtime basketball. 
“Winning 
Time” 
producers 
prove that Magic’s words are 
true, for better or worse — the 
show is not a duplication, but a 
Hollywood drama. 
Though 
the 
players 
are 
fictionalized, their on-screen 
chemistry or friction is palpable 
and true-to-life. Kareem Abdul 
Jabar (debut star Solomon 
Hughes) is a quiet team leader. 
He clashes with the smiling, 
irresistible Magic. They contrast 
the fearless Spencer Haywood 
(Wood Harris, “Remember the 
Titans”) who struggles with 
ongoing addiction. And much 
drama surrounds Norm Nixon 
(DeVaughn 
Nixon, 
Norm’s 
real son), the first challenge to 
Magic’s (and Isaiah’s) charisma. 
The show has no stunt doubles, 
and each actor trained to 
achieve 
their 
character’s 
signature style of play. 

Wednesday, June 29, 2022 — 3
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Climate change needs poetry, not 
apathy — so read ‘Habitat Threshold’

In his 2020 poetry collection “Habitat 
Threshold,” Craig Santos Perez wields his 
poetry as a way to critique climate change and 
the societal ills — racism, bigotry, capitalism 
and corporate greed, among others — that 
contribute to it. He doesn’t shy away from 
describing scenes that result from climate 
change, like refugees, rising sea levels and 
pollution. He confronts his struggles with 
raising his daughter in an environmentally 
fraught world and with his own complicity 
in the systems that contribute to climate 
change. This book is not for the faint of 
heart — but neither is contemplating the 
existential threat of climate change. And 
just like awareness of the climate crisis is 
necessary, so too is reading this collection. 
Poetry won’t remove microplastics from the 
ocean or reverse the melting of glaciers, but 
Perez demonstrates that it can make you feel 
something genuine in a seemingly doomed 
world.
Perez experiments with form through 
necropastorals, haikus, sonnets and prose 
poetry. Perhaps most notably, he employs 
“mimic poetry” (also known as “after 
poems”), which use the form of a pre-existing 
poem to create a new work that comments 
on new topics. Perez draws on well-known 
authors and their famous works, including 
Allen Ginsberg’s “America” and Maggie 

Smith’s “Good Bones,” and alters them to 
speak to ecological themes. In a wink and nod 
to the overtly ecopoetic slant of his poetry, 
instead of writing “after Wallace Stevens,” 
for example, under his new poem’s title in 
reference to the original “Thirteen Ways,” he 
writes “recycling Wallace Stevens.” 
By retaining original, often familiar 
poetry formatting (he also “recycles” Irving 
Berlin’s “White Christmas” and Dr. Seuss’s 
“One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish”) 
and juxtaposing it with jarring images of 
climate disaster, Perez forces the reader out 
of complicity and into a contemplation of the 
way our environment affects every aspect 
of our lives — even those aspects that feel so 
routine. William Carlos Williams’s original 
“This Is Just To Say” is a sweet, intimate and 
often-parodied poem reminiscent of a note 
left on a kitchen table in which the speaker is 
apologizing to an unknown other for eating 
their plums. 

Drake leaves his comfort zone on ‘Honestly, Nevermind,’ but maybe he 
shouldn’t have

For over half a decade, Drake has 
been the poster child for commercial 
rap success at any cost, particularly 
creativity. There’s no denying his ear 
for beats, steady flow or high-end 
production, but over the years, he’s 
seemingly refused to take risks to 
expand his musical ability, all while his 
lyrical ability has taken a steep nosedive 
into unbearable corniness. To his credit, 
he’s still been able to consistently put out 
mostly decent rap music, which isn’t a 
trivial accomplishment, but it feels like 
Drake has been long overdue for a real 
statement record that can breathe life 
back into his career.
Honestly, Nevermind is as bold of a 
statement as anybody could have hoped 
for from Drake, as he mostly forgoes 
his typical hip-hop beats in favor of a 
new house music style. In theory, house 
music should be a great fit for Drake, 
given his shortcomings as a lyricist. 

Drake even has past success in this 
genre: His 2017 song “Passionfruit” is a 
great, danceable hip-hop song that shows 
the full potential of dance/rap genre 
fusion. However, Honestly, Nevermind 
shows that Drake lacks a fundamental 
understanding of the house music genre 
deep enough to justify an entire album of 
it and isn’t willing to commit and take the 
necessary step of fully overhauling his 
musical style.
One of the key techniques used by 
great house musicians, like Daft Punk, 
DJ Falcon and Armand Van Helden, to 
turn basic, repetitive ideas into lengthy 
yet compelling songs is full usage of the 
sound frequency spectrum: As soon 
as an idea gets stale, they can filter out 
the low or high sounds to give the song 
a fresh, new feel. On “Passionfruit,” 
Drake did an exceptional job at creating 
a rich, sonic texture that was engaging 
while supporting his tastefully low-
key lyrics and vocal delivery. But on 
Honestly, Nevermind, nearly all of the 
instrumentals are heavily washed-out, 
occupying the low end of the frequency 

spectrum to accommodate Drake’s 
higher-pitched, autotuned vocals. On 
the song “Massive,” the producers 
attempt a standard drop-out about 
four minutes in, but the instrumental is 
already so washed-out that the effect of 
filtering out the high-pitched sound is 
lost. Frustratingly, the song also briefly 
features a vibrant and energetic piano 
part that teases the potential of this 
album if it had a more consistently full 
sound.
Because Drake underutilizes common 
house production techniques, he instead 
has to rely on his lyrical ability to keep his 
songs interesting for the listener, which 
generally does not go over well. On 
nearly every song on the album, Drake’s 
autotuned voice awkwardly rambles 
vague and uninteresting lyrics over his 
simple dance beats. Lyrically, Drake is 
at his best when he’s doing the least: On 
songs like “Overnight” and “A Keeper,” 
Drake’s repetition of short phrases fits 
the simplistic house instrumentals well. 
But on songs like “Texts Go Green” and 
“Massive,” the more complicated lyrics 

are incongruous with the simple beats 
that accompany them. “Falling Back” is 
a good example of both types of Drake’s 
lyricism: In the opening verse, it feels 
like Drake is just sayingw words without 
intent (“How do I, how do I feel? How do I 
feel?”), whereas Drake’s repetition of just 
one phrase in the chorus (“Falling back 
on me”) communicates Drake’s message 

better and fits with the instrumental. 
Throughout the album, it’s often unclear 
if the listener is actually supposed to 
listen carefully to Drake’s narrative or 
just groove to the beat.

 JACK MOESER
Daily Arts Writer

‘Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers 
Dynasty’ is Hollywood entertainment at its 
finest — just don’t call it a true story

KAYA GINSKY
Daily Arts Writer

EMILIA FERRANTE
Senior Arts Editor

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