By T.J. Simers

Laker honks, you’re gonna love HBO’s season 2 about your heroes, of course missing the point about how shallow it makes you all appear.

I watched the first episode of season 2 of Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, but have no idea how shallow you must have been to adopt these bum steers as your idols.,

The HBO show, based on “Showtime,” by Jeff Pearlman, makes everyone appear devoid of any redeeming qualities beyond shooting a ball, and yet the people of Los Angeles adore them.

Jerry Buss comes across as the worst father imaginable on an episode dedicated to fatherhood, his sons—dopes and his daughter winning favor because she sucks up to daddy by telling him she’s just like him.

Paul Westhead and Pat Riley have been assigned the roles of resident buffoons and Jerry cussing West would never become the NBA logo if this is how the league regarded him. West ought to be suing the makers of this show, his reputation trashed.

Magic Johnson comes across as a sex fiend, his knee brace ruining his time in bed with one young lady and then listening to his knee talk to him. Amazing the access Pearlman must have had.

Magic is portrayed as an egotistical me and me only player, who is the last guy I would want my son accepting as a role model. And you people were buying his jersey.

The father of the girl that Magic knocks up early on with the Lakers, says, “I want (Magic) to step up and be a father and not a coward,” as a financial payoff is discussed.

“Until this is all worked out,” Magic tells his parents, “I got to be thinking about me.”

Magic. Magic. Magic.

Magic is later seen holding his baby and asking the birth mother what his name is. Very heartwarming.

Magic’s father tells a money-grubbing lawyer that Magic’s family has worked everything out with the girl’s family. No idea if the Lakers were part of that deal.

When the episode shifts to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, he comes across as a brooding isolationist, and well, maybe they nailed that.

The Lakers do well in Westhead’s system until Magic returns from his knee injury, the Lakers beating Boston until he shows up to watch the game and the crowd starts chanting his name.

That’s shallow Laker fans for you, Magic turning to the camera and badmouthing the guy playing Larry Bird, everyone watching in Lakerland probably yelling, “Yeah!”

The episode goes deep into Buss’ relationship with his kids, the abusive father belittling his sons and then leaving in a huff to pull out the scrapbook he’s kept of all the women he dated over the years. I’m not sure that’s what my wife means when she says she’s going to do some scrapbooking.

Jerry’ has just belittles his sons, but for the moment he’s not any of the beauties in the scrapbook believe in him. Jeanie overhears and tells her dad she’s always believed in him. The closest Pearlman comes to chills, and I wonder where he was sitting when Jeanie told that to her dad.

A short time later we see Magic’s wife, “Cookie,” telling Magic’s mother that Magic will soon be on the prowl for another woman. I presume that’s where Chick Hearn got the saying: “The game’s in the refrigerator, the door’s closed, the light’s out, the eggs are cooling, the butter’s getting hard and the Jello’s jiggling.”

Magic’s mother explains to Cookie that Magic’s father had another family, so she takes comfort in that.

As soap operas go, Pearlman has given the show’s writers a wonderful framework built on angst, an illegitimate child, bungling brothers, a daughter who is a climber a womanizing father and heroes on the basketball court adored by millions who are really troubled human beings.

Perfect for Lakers’ fans who want to relive the glory days.

By T.J. Simers

Dear Patrick Soon-Shiong,

So, your newspaper buries Game 1 of the NBA Finals inside the sports section, letting everyone know how important Denver and Miami are to the people of Los Angeles. And then….

Your newspaper runs one of the longest stories to ever appear in the sports section, beginning on the front page of sports re: Game 2 promoting the guy who runs the nightclub in the basement of the Miami arena. Complete with pictures you paid for.

Miami. The nightclub is in Miami. What a stunner they have a Forum Club inside their basketball arena. Wow.

By now you have probably guessed, Patrick, or have already seen his expense account and know this is the handiwork of Times’ Culture Critic, Tyler R. Tynes.

So far your Culture Critics has been clueless when it comes to culture in the Los Angeles area. He wrote about Philadelphia fans, a losing fighter from Victorville and almost no one cares about boxing anymore, and Brittney Griner without getting an interview with her.

Now add everything you might want to know about a guy who works in a Miami nightclub. Consider it breaking news.

You know who I am talking about, the guy Editor Kevin Merida recommended and sports editor Iliana Limon Romero hired to keep Merida happy. The guy who has written four bloated stories to date, one so long they couldn’t even get it into the newspaper.

They never allow for comments below any of Tyler R. Tynes’ stories like they do columnists Bill Plaschke and Dylan Hernandez. I wonder why?

There’s a picture on the front sports page of the guy who runs the nightclub, and on the two pages of more writing about the club—yes two pages and God knows how many killed trees—-there’s a picture of bar patrons and female bartenders missing part of their uniforms. The cutline reads: “Courtside Club bustles with activity beginning hours before Miami Heat games and continuing hours after.”

This revelation that Miami has a Forum Club must have really excited Lakers’ fans, although I might have a suggested using the space to write about a week spent with Austin Reaves and his growing acclaim.

There’s another picture of young lovelies, all of them with arms raised above their heads to celebrate their good fortune of being featured in the LA Times. You paid for that picture, Patrick.

The Times sports editor had already declared no interest in the basketball game between Denver and Miami, but this solved a problem.

Our Culture Critic had been working on this story since being hired last October and that’s a lot of time to spend in a bar without getting much in return.

He hasn’t written much so this would show he can write, well, wax poetic about nothing we care about.

What good fortune Miami made it to the Finals, or it might have been a really rough start for Tyler R. Tynes and Merida and Romero.

.

By T.J. Simers

Patrick, Patrick, Patrick!

Your newspaper hasn’t told all reporters yet, but it plans to commit suicide.

The editors were informed Thursday that the newspapers’ deadline to submit stories for publication will be 6 p.m. in the future when they have to shift to new presses. They got rid of their own.

When I wrote for the Times, my deadline was 10:45, Plaschke could take that to 11 for a playoff game or USC contest.

The editors were also told to condition readers to the change, thereby removing Major League box scores from the newspaper beginning around this season’s All-Star break.

They attempted to do that once before more than a decade ago but an outcry from readers forced them to reconsider.

On the bright side, Patrick, I don’t think that will happen because there just aren’t that many subscribers.

Back in the days when the newspaper had more heft in size and community impact the circulations on Sundays exceeded 1.5 million and the rest of the week it would often be close to one million.

Tough to get to 200,000 now and watch those numbers dip when the deadline is 6 p.m. and the quality of news slips reporting because there just won’t be any way to get stuff in the newspaper.

That means last night’s Lakers playoff game wouldn’t make the newspaper in any form until two days later.

Why buy it? Exactly.

The Times sports department will also transfer David Warton, Steve Henson and one of the copyeditors out of sports to a new breaking news desk. I presume breaking news no longer has anything to do with the newspaper after 6 p.m.

If the newspaper is successful in getting rid of the box scores, there isn’t anything that will be considered untouchable.

As it is now, the sports columnists have been writing for a newspaper that comes out 24 hours after the day’s next report on the Lakers and Kings.

In the final analysis it’s tough to say whether readers who don’t care about columns running so late have allowed the 6 p.m. deadlines or the newspaper is just hellbent in getting rid of the printed product.

This will be the end of the Times’ sports section, as Los Angeles had come to know it over a lifetime.

By T.J. Simers

Dear Patrick Soon-Shiong,

Got an idea for you.

Went to lunch with former LA Times sports editor Bill Dwyre, and once I got his bib on and his walker off to the side, Dwyre spoke. And I listened because he’s still the best sports editor on this side of the country.

He wanted to know why your newspaper doesn’t have an Internet/TV column in the sports section given how much TV rules the sports world. His way of saying, “where is Larry Stewart when you need him?”

That’s when I cleaned the drool off his face, worried that he had really misspoke, or meant to say where is “Jon Stewart when you need him.”

He’s so right, the Times lacks an important ingredient which could be easily remedied, just moving one of the many staffers who doesn’t work all that much and putting them on the Internet/TV beat. Or taking some of your top hands and making them a columnist.

Many of the so-called experts in sports have never been closer to LeBron than the crush of 20 reporters standing around him. In so many more cases you have people employed, like Lake writer Dan Woike, who are totally enamored with the people they are covering, negating serious coverage.

You need more folks capable holding athletes accountable.

While you are working all day to discover the cure for cancer, the talking heads have taken over sports, every one of them convinced they have insight in what drives your favorite team, the Lakers.

The talking heads are sports scholars like Pablo Torres, Monica McNutt, Israel Gutierrez, Bomani Jones, Courtney Cronin, anyone talking about the NFL Draft, Stephen A. Smith and Max Kellerman. They each have an opinion on everything in sports with no accountability.

Stephen A. likes to address athletes as his brother; wouldn’t you like to know if that’s his way of reminding athletes he’s black like them and unlike the others who aren’t? Does that give him an edge, or has he earned his standing in sports.

How good is CBS’s Jim Hill? How do you explain his staying power? Who replaced Roggin and is he or she any good? Explain Jim Nantz’s stature in sports. Who is now the voice of the Dodgers? Did the Angels ever have anyone? I can’t stay up late enough to catch Rob Fukuzaki’s act; is he still there?

How did Tony Reali become a household name, and what does that say about you if that’s true?

“There were big home runs hit over the weekend and we’re going to dive into that next,” said Harold Reynolds Monday, and right now you are asking yourself how you ever got though the weekend not knowing that.

There is so much unchecked on TV every day, and Patrick, that’s where a newspaper was so important. A newspaper had ears and would not allow a lot of the hype delivered on air today.

There are so many .com sites to be monitored, and I’m told your daughter has had a positive impact on the paper, so she would know the value of doing a better job on social media while merging it with the newspaper.

Right now you have one columnist who never writes (Tyler R. Tynes), one who can’t remember what position he took yesterday (Bill Plaschke), one who is better than all the others (Dylan Hernandez) and one who is Helene Elliott and who nobody reads.

Your sports section needs an upgrade—what better than introducing an Internet/TV columnist who works the social platforms?

Bill Shaikin wrote a first-rate story on the Boston Parking Lot Attendant Monday. For one good day the newspaper looks good, alive and professional. Shaikin might not be interested but I would start there and see if he would like to sink his pugnacious attention into social media.

Or how about Lance Pugmire, and what does this say about your sports section? The former Times’ sports writer won on Monday the Fleisher Award, the top journalism award in boxing. And right now he’s a real estate salesman.

I’d offer more, but Dwyre is nodding off.

By T.J. Simers

You are going to read another “Isn’t LeBron James just the greatest” columns from Bill Plaschke in the LA Times tomorrow morning. He wrote it last night, but the newspaper was in no rush to get it to its readers. But it’s online now.

And it makes me laugh, one day Plaschke wanting the guy to clean out his locker and the next genuflecting before him.

The headline atop Plaschke’s column online now reads: “Beating Grizzlies with his grit, LeBron James claims full ownership of the Lakers.” It’s not true, but it relays Plaschke’s sentiments.

The headline atop his column last year read: “The Lakers Must Trade LeBron.”

“Right now, for their own survival, the Lakers pretty much need him to leave,” wrote Plaschke. Maybe he meant, for the Grizzlies survival, LeBron needs to leave.

A little later after his LeBron must go column,, while doing an interview on Doug Gottlieb’s show, Plaschke said Phil Jackson would like to see LeBron traded, a pretty significant endorsement to Plaschke’s column.

That is, if Jackson said it. When Gottlieb asked Plaschke on air about Jackson’s pronouncement, Plaschke said, “I’ve just heard that, but I’ve got nothing to back that up.”

Not a good thing if you are a newspaperman

It didn’t matter, though, because it was Plaschke, instant credibility you know without checking the facts. The Internet picked up Plaschke’s comment and reported that a LA columnist said that he’s heard Phil Jackson wants LeBron traded. I’m sure it was probably great fodder for Around the Horn.

Later, Plaschke reported that LBron had hinted that he wanted to be traded.

“His message is clear,” wrote Plaschke, even though he supposedly only hinted. “Get me help or get me out of here. The response from Laker management should be just as clear: See ya.”

All that sounds like someone’s concerted effort to railroad the guy out of town—odd when there are a number of basketball experts who say the guy is really good.

Or, as Shaquille O’Neal put it, “If you trade LeBron, you’ll never win again.”

There has been the suggestion in the LA Times that LeBron has made no connection to the city of Los Angeles or the Lakers’ fan base, which is the city of Los Angeles. It didn’t sound like that Monday night, but the newspaper would know better.

I’ve never been a really big fan of LeBron’s because I got to know and watch Kobe Bryant at work. His personality, charisma and in-your-face competitive drive was overwhelming. LeBron was more athletically gifted, and I don’t think Kobe would have disagreed, but LeBron has never been as showy as Kobe.

And I was gone by the time LeBron arrived to win another title for the Lakers.

But I watched Monday night and when he scored to send the Lakers’ playoff game into overtime, he just rolled like a tank to the right side and scored a layup. Kobe would have dribbled through his legs, gone left, and then right and then leaped to the rafters before scoring and splashing to the floor.

Whatever your pleasure, LeBron’s team went on to win.

I can’t think of a single thing LeBron has done wrong since coming to LA, although maybe Plaschke could advise differently. Most parents only ask for an athletic role model who is perfect, the world in short supply, but LeBron comes pretty close.

I know he’s got a Jim Gray in his background, a powerful agent and a son being shoved down our throats, but he stands pretty tall as the ideal representative for the Los Angeles Lakers.

I know he’s 38, and by the standard of some he’s old. I’m 72 and don’t consider myself old; I was willing to go back to work for the declining Times and meet deadlines.

I also know he didn’t look old when I watched him put No. 2 Memphis on the verge of elimination. I’ve always thought Memphis should be eliminated.

I do worry now that Plaschke might be getting old, willing to scrap a once-in-a-generation superstar for the best that Rob Pelinka could find. If not old, was he just writing a cheap column to get attention?

I know something about that, but when I referred to the Dodgers as the Choking Dogs, they were.

Maybe Plaschke has changed his mind now, thinking the Lakers could never have gotten this far without the splendid work of LeBron. Maybe.

He changes his mind a lot, you know, while taking firm stands.

By T.J. Simers

Dear Patrick Soon-Shiong,

OK, Patrick, if I am going to rip your newspaper as I have been doing, I thought I should take a look at it today and write about all the good things your newspaper is doing.

But before I could do that, I got an email about your sports section. And it was both ugly and disturbing.

Your new sports columnist, you know the one who has written but once in the six months that you have been paying him—producing a story about Eagles’ fans a week after the Super Bowl, is scheduled to write Tuesday for the second time. Three days after the fight he’s covering!

I’m told he spent a week with a L.A.-based fighter who is fighting tonight in Las Vegas. I did that twice with Oscar de la Hoya, writing every day that week leading up to his fights and then covering the fight.

You sports editor, Iliana, is apparently trying to keep it a secret that your new columnist will be writing again. There isn’t a single mention of tonight’s fight in your newspaper, no information for your readers, and who better to do that than the guy who has been with one of the fighters for a week?

Online they are calling it the “fight of the year,” but I’ve never heard of these guys. It doesn’t help that the Times doesn’t even mention they are fighting tonight, but I wouldn’t care anyways. But maybe some of your readers do.

I don’t know if your new columnist has spent the week with the fighter in Las Vegas on your dime, Patrick, but you might want to inquire.

Strange the newspaper would hire a columnist and not have him write, stranger yet hiring a guy with deadline issues.

This used to be the almighty Los Angeles Times, Patrick, and I’m trying my best not to be so negative, but I just opened the Saturday newspaper and there is Bill Plaschke’s Thursday column on the Clippers.

I read it online Friday, but there it is again in Saturday’s newspaper, two days after the game.

I know most everyone doesn’t care about the Clippers, but come on, it’s Los Angeles’ morning newspaper, and getting your No. 1 columnist two days later isn’t exactly “breaking news.”

What is going on here, Patrick. I read your main hockey story, and I can make sacrifices like that, but the writer never got to the final score before the story jumped to B9.

Your hockey writer is too long-winded, beginning her story by telling us, “it has become something of an inside joke among Kings’ fans,” and I couldn’t read any further. Two more paragraphs and still no final score and the game went into overtime and all that matters is who won?

I liked the fact, though, your Angels’ writer wasn’t suffering from jetlag after going all the way to New York with the team and writing about a Yankees’ cook. Grueling or grilling.

She gave us a story on Ohtani on Saturday, and I guess I’m a little surprised why your newspaper isn’t leading the charge to keep Ohtani here.

If the plan is to let him go sign with the Dodgers, fine. But your newspaper treats Anaheim like a desert outpost, and the best player in the game is playing there. You have a Japanese-speaking columnist in Dylan Hernandez on your staff— why not have Hernandez shadow Ohtani and give us coverage no one else can provide?

To show you hard I am trying to be positive, I read a Dan Woike story. I’ll let that sink in.

Woike gave us coverage of the LeBron James new conference, which was covered by all the media in L.A. No harm, no foul, so you can see I can be positive when I hold my nose.