By Ronald N. Guy Jr.
Five years ago, Kobe Bean Bryant was jetting between a
Colorado courtroom and L.A. Lakers games.
He was in the process of a meteoric fall from NBA golden boy to
vilified, accused rapist. Sponsors were
bailing, fans were booing and the star player with the infectious smile had
become a toxic image for the NBA.
Bryant had been considered one of the NBA’s good guys, at a time when
the league was desperate for positive imagery.
But in July 2003, this smart, articulate, squeaky-clean husband and
expectant father went to Colorado for medical treatment on an ailing knee. He ended up at a resort in Eagle, Colorado
where he had a sexual encounter with the front desk attendant. She alleged rape, the Eagle county District
Attorney’s office pressed charges and a lengthy legal battle began. We’ll never know exactly what happened in
that Colorado hotel room. What we do
know is one of the NBA’s brightest stars had random sex with a woman other than
his wife. The criminal charges against
Bryant were later dropped and the civil suit was settled out of court. So while Bryant was never convicted of any
criminal offense, he was an admitted adulterer. Unfortunately, this is neither uncommon nor does the public find
it particularly offensive for most star athletes; infidelity and stardom being
frequent dance partners. Bryant
succumbed to the intoxicating lifestyle of the pro athlete, the roar of adoring
crowds and the sense of invincibility they breed. Given society’s general tolerance of infidelity, Bryant probably
was judged too harshly in the court of public opinion. But he represented all that was good in
professional sports and we expected more of him. Sadly, when this saga ended, he seemed to have more in common with
Mike Tyson than he did with character stalwarts such as Art Monk, Darrell Green
or Grant Hill.
We all meander between our professional and private lives
and when one is out of sorts, a common coping mechanism is to seek solace in
the other. Bryant was no
different. His therapist became the
basketball court…briefly. In the years
following his legal troubles, the Lakers declined from perennial championship
contender to a marginal playoff team.
Bryant’s relationship with star center Shaquille O’Neil deteriorated,
contributing to the latter’s acrimonious departure from the team, he fell out
of favor with Head Coach Phil Jackson and, as recently as this past summer, he
attempted to force the Lakers to trade him. For most basketball fans, the passage
of time created a psychological distance from Bryant’s worst of times, but
until this season, he was still far from the pre-Colorado, Hollywood darling;
that rare player whose game, regardless of the jersey he wears, is impossible
not to applaud. So how appropriate it
seems for Hollywood to be the setting of this return to glory. During this past season, some of the young
players on the Lakers matured, the front office made a shrewd in-season trade
and Bryant became a better teammate.
More importantly, the Lakers began to win with regularity. The team finished with the best record in
the Western Conference and is once again poised for a title run. Last week, as flashbulbs popped, Bryant, the
former fallen star of the NBA, once again adorned that infectious smile and
proudly accepted his first Most Valuable Player trophy from NBA Commissioner
David Stern. At that moment the events
of Colorado seemed a distance memory, filed away firmly in the past. Bryant, having long since reconciled with
his wife and now a proud father of two daughters, has seemingly completed his
professional reclamation.
How did Bryant navigate this journey? And why have so many steroid users in
baseball failed to accomplish the same?
In many respects, Bryant’s transgressions should be viewed as more
offensive than, say, those of Rafael Palmeiro, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds or
Roger Clemens. While those baseball
stars cheated themselves, the game and fans, baseball is, after all, just a
game. Bryant’s act forever changed the
lives of real people (Bryant, his accuser and his wife). In the spirit of simple answers to complex
problems, a children’s book and familiar parental lesson may hold the answer to
Bryant’s transformation. We’ve all
heard a parent or teacher encourage us to admit our mistakes and to tell the
truth. That’s timeless advice. In fact, I was reading a Care Bear book the
other day (yes, I just admitted that in print…what can I say, I’m a shameless
dad) that used “trouble bubbles” as a metaphor for life’s mistakes. The advice of mother Care Bear to child was
to “pop those trouble bubbles (by telling the truth and admitting your
mistakes)…lest they linger and get bigger (more problematic).” Bryant’s story includes an element that is
absent from the story of our fallen baseball heroes: an admission of fault and
an apology. Shortly after the
accusations against him became public, Bryant held a press conference, admitted
his adultery, expressed his disgust with himself and apologized to his wife,
the Lakers and basketball fans. In that
act, he opened the door for us to forgive.
And forgiveness is what sports fans do best. Conversely, baseball’s arrogant denials are endless. Baseball gave us Palmeiro wagging his finger
in denial at Congress and McGwire’s pathetic request to simply not dwell on the
past. Bonds smugly soiled the greatest
record in professional sports (the all-time homerun record) and Clemens’ fall
from grace seems to get more bizarre and disturbing with each passing
week. In addition to cheating (by all
reasonable accounts) on the field, he appears to be a serial cheater off it
(what’s the affair count up to now?).
My how things could have been different for our baseball heroes had they
introduced their steroid trouble bubbles to a pin. Instead, we were left waiting for an admission and an apology
that never came.
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