Will Solomon Hughes Be Part of Season 2 of HBO Series on the Lakers?

Former Cal star got good reviews on his portrayal of Kareem Addul-Jabbar in Season 1's final episode of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty”

Will former Cal center Solomon Hughes be back to play Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Season 2 of the HBO series on the Los Angeles Lakers?

Season 1 of HBO’s controversial and popular series, “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” concluded Sunday (May 8) with an episode about the Lakers’ 1980 championship-clinching game, and Hughes got a rave review from Esquire, which said this:

Solomon Hughes (as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) gave his best performance of the season.

So now that HBO has requested a second season of this series, you would think Hughes would again have a central role in it. Well, there are some conflicting opinions on that, as we will detail later.

We reported back in early April (including a Hughes video interview with Vern Glenn) that this series represented Hughes’ first acting job, and that he did a lot of research and practiced perfecting Abdul-Jabbar’s sky hook in preparation.

Solomon – who is now Dr. Solomon Hughes -- was a member of Cal’s basketball teams from 1998 to 2002, starting 52 games for Cal, which won 20 games three times in his four-year career. He led the Pac-10 in field-goal percentage in 2001 (62.9%), and was captain of the team.

But now he is getting good reviews for acting, and on April 4 Esquire.com posted a story with the headline: "Solomon Hughes Is The Year's Most Unlikely Star."

There is no date set to begin the filming and the airing of Season 2 of the HBO Lakers series, and speculation about what the focus of Season 2 will be offers different opinions about whether Hughes will be involved.

The prevailing theory is that Season 2 will simply take up where Season 1 left off. That would give the series a chance to more closely inspect that 1979-80 season and its ramifications and perhaps explore the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird rivalry.

Screenrant.com offered this possibility:

The Winning Time season 2 cast should be filled with many of the cast members from season 1. The lineup of real-life characters needed to tell the next chapter in the story means viewers will see more of Magic Johnson (Quincy Isaiah), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Solomon Hughes), and Jerry Buss (John C. Reilly). There's also every possibility of returns for Paul Westhead (Jason Segel), Pat Riley (Adrien Brody), Jeanie Buss (Hadley Robinson), Jerry West (Jason Clarke), Bill Sharman (Brett Cullen), Claire Rothman (Gabby Hoffman), Michael Cooper (Delante Desouza), Norm Nixon (DeVaughn Nixon), Larry Bird (Sean Patrick Small), Cookie Kelly (Tamera Tomakili), and more.

The Sporting News noted this:

"Winning Time" is based on Jeff Pearlman's book "Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s." Season 1 has only chronicled the 1979-80 campaign, which ended with the Lakers defeating the 76ers in the NBA Finals, so the series certainly isn't lacking material for additional seasons.

Indiewire.com interviewed series co-creator Max Borenstein, and what he says with regard to a question about the involvement of Larry Bird in the story suggests Hughes would be part of Season 2 since it would include Abdul-Jabbar's part:

[Indiewire]: The Larry Bird (Sean Small) that exists in this series is filtered through Magic’s perception in this season. But it seems like that last moment of him out practicing in the backyard after the Finals hints that this character might grow to be more of his own person as this show goes along.

[Borenstein]: Anyone who knows the story of these two guys, has seen the documentaries or read about them, knows that what starts out as an intense bitter resentment and rivalry ultimately became very, very deep complicated friendship. In a way, they were the only two guys who really understood each other and so they were very uniquely bonded.

In our show, hopefully we have an opportunity to get there. Getting to face the Celtics is like the White Walkers in “Game of Thrones.” They flirt with it for quite a while in this iteration of the dynasty and then only eventually get there. When they do, it becomes a rivalry for the ages. And so this is the hint that he’s more than just the villain, that there’s an internal presence there, and that he’s every bit as competitive and driven as Magic Johnson. Hopefully we have an opportunity to get to that place where we get to explore the beginnings of their friendship and get into Larry’s POV, which is certainly part of our ambition eventually.

However, The Sporting News story and a USA Today report speculated that several years could be skipped to focus on the subsequent Lakers’ dynasty:

Bryan Alexander of USA Today wrote this, via Yahoo.com:

HBO has already renewed "Winning Time" for a second season and optioned Pearlman’s follow-up book, 2020's "Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty," suggesting the next installment will focus on the late '90s-early 2000s Kobe Bryant-Shaquille O'Neal era.

Hughes presumably would be left out of the cast if that is the focus of Season 2. Unless, of course there are flashbacks.

The other possibility is that HBO is already preparing itself for third season of the series and that Season 2 will still deal with the Magic Johnson-Kareem Abdul-Jabbar years and leave the Shaq-Kobe story for Season 3.

We are not even sure whether HBO has decided on a focus for Season 2, since no date has been set for the start of filming. The best guess is that Season 2 would debut sometime in 2023.

One thing to remember: This series is a dramatization, not a documentary, and you need to check with many of the sites that address the series' authenticity for what is fact and was is Hollywood fiction.

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Cover photo of Solomon Hughes courtesy of Cal Athletics

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Follow Jake Curtis of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jakecurtis53

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