Kobe

The Kobe Bryant saga came to an end, or at least the part of the saga that threatened to send #8 to prison for the rest of his life. My guess is that this win for Kobe is more important to him than any of the three rings he's won, but it was pretty much a loss for everyone else.

Today was my first day of school, and I did something that I always do. During the first few moments of class, I gave my students three-by-five note cards and asked them to write down any questions they might want to ask me. I would answer them at the end of the period.

The questions are usually the same from year to year. Are you strict? Is this class boring? Will we have a lot of homework? Do you still coach the basketball team? Some are more personal, which is fine. How old are you? Are you married? Do you have any children? Why did you decide to become a teacher? What is your ethnicity? Stuff like that. Good fun for all.

So during third period today I was running through a stack of cards, answering the questions one at a time, when I came across this one: Who is your favorite basketball player?

Here was my answer. Fourteen months ago, the answer would've been a slam dunk. Kobe Bryant, without question. But not anymore. I didn't mention words like rape or adultery, but everyone in the room knew exactly what I was talking about. And in that moment, I realized that I don't have a favorite basketball player.

Throughout these fourteen months, I've been incredibly conflicted. I've never been so naive as to believe that the athletes I root for are paragons of virtue, but there must be a line drawn somewhere. I don't expect them to be role models, but neither do I expect to wake up one morning to find that they've become criminals. And so when the news first streamed out of Eagle, Colorado, attached to a mugshot of my favorite player, a player I had aggressively defended in banged-out e-mails and heated conversations, I had no response.

His case has been dismissed, and it's certainly possible that everything happened exactly the way Bryant said that it did. It wouldn't be the first time that a woman tried to take advantage of millionaire athlete. Even so, this was Bryant's doing. He had gotten himself into this situation, and even if everything had gone smoothly that evening, he had still betrayed his wife and daughter.

Because of this, I became furious with him as he presented himself as the victim, paraded on awards shows, compared himself to Martin Luther King, suddenly found God, and proclaimed his love for his wife with an eye-ball-sized diamond and ink splashed on his biceps. Not only was he trying to convince his fans and his family of his martyrdom, he seemed to be trying to convince himself. But through it all, he never accepted any responsibility.

And what of the accuser in this case? Her role in this travesty cannot be ignored. My guess is that her version of the events is closer to the truth than Bryant's, but she clearly lacks some credibility. When Bryant asked her to his room that night in Colorado, she should have known what was coming. I'm not saying that her presence in that room implied an acceptance of a sexual advance, but she should have known that it could be perceived as such. Just as Bryant shouldn't have asked her to his room, she shouldn't have come.

But if we are to believe the accuser's story, how are we to respond to her withdrawal from the case this week? We can neither doubt nor comprehend the magnitude of the stress she's been dealing with for the past fourteen months, but this dismissal is incredibly curious. Did she really wake up on Wednesday morning and decide she had had enough, or had she been struggling with this decision the entire time? (If this is the case, the district attorney must shoulder some of the blame for pushing forward with the case without a solid complainant.)

But here's where it all comes back to the money. The accuser has apparently decided that she can't take the scrutiny that would come along with a trial. This is understandable, except for the fact that she intends to go on with the civil trial, even though she won't be afforded the same protections given in a criminal case. The difference between the two? She stands to gain several million dollars from a verdict or settlement in the civil case.

So has this been only about the money the entire time? If that's so, doesn't that bring us back to square one? Was she after Bryant and his money from the moment she laid eyes on him, or did she settle on this idea after the fact? What's sad is that even if she was raped in that hotel room, and she's pursuing the civil case in order to extract some form of financial punishment from Bryant, most will now think otherwise.

All of this brings me back to the index card I held in my hand this morning. I stood before that group of eighth graders, boys and girls who are just learning the ways of men and women as they wink and tease, flirt and laugh with each other, and my feelings on the issue fell into place. A difficult question was suddenly simple.

As I said earlier, Kobe Bryant is no longer my favorite player. I will still marvel at his brilliance on the basketball court, and I'll likely use this space in the future to reassert my opinion that he is the best player in the NBA, but I will not be able to hold him up as a hero. He may regain his endorsement contracts, score thousands more points, and fill the rest of his fingers with championship rings, but he'll never be able to replace what we all lost in Colorado.

Comments

[howard reynolds]

9/6/04

hi:

i discovered your blog via a link from John J Perricone's http://www.onlybaseballmatters.com/. i enjoyed reading your thoughts on kobe and i was moved to comment, despite my general agreement with your points and the similarity of my own struggle to enjoy the performances of great athletes in the face of the incresing incidence of bad, amoral and criminal behavior by many of these stars.

first, the traditional protections afforded a rape complainant in this day and age were largely absent or neutralized by the 'accidental' leaks of information to the press by the court, and the smearing of her by the defense attorneys and the sensational-seeking news media. such smears are inevitable with such a celebrity defendant. she was hardly protected.

second, kobe's public statement. while this was obviously a product of lawyer negotiations, and was proffered in the context of efforts to settle the civil complaint, this was a confession. kobe admits he now realized that the victim did not consent. at some level, this statement must be accepted on its face.

i also enjoyed your interview with m. sokolove. i am so far behind on my reading, i will probably not get to his chronicle of the crenshaw high '79 team for another several months. the early part of my growing up was in that area (at age 10, my father escaped us from south-central up north to davis california),and this background increases my interest in their story.

i am a huge sports fan, and i look forward to reading through your website for past posts as well as your ongoing entries. good luck with the new school year.

best regards,

howard reynolds
new york city

[Hank]

Howard:
Upon re-reading my post, I think I strayed a bit from my true feelings on the issue. First, I'm angry with Kobe. Like I said, I don't think he needs to be a role model, but he certainly needs to be a decent citizen. Even if his version of the events is accurate, he was still in the wrong. As for the accuser, we'll probably never know her true motives, but things are muddy enough here that I'm inclined to believe that she should accept at least part of the blame. One of your points, however, is dead-on, and I should have included it with my initial comments. The flaws in our legal system have been highlighted once again. Kobe Bryant's celebrity cannot be removed from the equation, and it's a variable so strong that it distorts every aspect of the case. If he weren't a world famous athlete, would the accuser ever have come to his room? Would a normal defendant have been able to mount such a defense, estimated to have come with a price tag in the neighborhood of eight to ten million dollars? Would Eagle County have been willing to take on the enormous financial burden of trying such a case? The fact that we have to ask these questions leads to another, more troubling one -- was justice served here? We'll never know.