The man died before the name
Kobe Bryant, 1978-2020
I was hanging out with friends Sunday afternoon when I got the news.
Scrolling on my phone, catching up on messages, I saw the first expressions of shock and grief. When I clicked over on the TMZ alert, I was convinced it was a hoax. Even now: I’m still stunned; I’m incredibly sad. I still have trouble believing that Kobe Bryant is dead, at 41.
Kobe was probably the greatest basketball player of my generation. And he was so much more than that. He was an incredibly complicated man; an extraordinarily ruthless competitor, so much so that it probably cost him a few more championships than the five he did win; and one of the most intelligent and intellectually curious athletes I’ve ever come across. And he was a rapist.
Here’s the thing: sports journalism and sports writing has to involve reporting on every aspect of an athlete’s life. The good: absolutely, because sports carries with it the infinite capacity for joy and despair. But also: the bad, and the ugly, because we are human, and our humanity isn’t just defined by the good we do, but our low moments and foul as well.
Hagiography is for saints, and we are all sinners. Kobe was an astoundingly nuanced and complex man; and any obituary of him must be as well.
Kobe Bryant spent 20 years with the Los Angeles Lakers, probably the most storied team in the NBA. But his journey began across the ocean.
The son of NBA journeyman Joe Bryant, Bryant spent his childhood in Italy, learning how to speak Italian fluently, and becoming a fan of Italian powerhouse AC Milan. He began playing basketball at age 3, and regularly attended basketball camps in America during the summer.
Kobe was absolutely spectacular in high school. He led Lower Merion to its first state title in 53 years; by the time he was done, he’d become the all-time leading scorer in the Philadelphia area with 2,883 points. That total outstripped NBA legend Wilt Chamberlain, and served as a preview of what was to come. He also took R&B star Brandy to his high school prom, which was an all-time BMOC move.
While Bryant considered playing college basketball - Duke, UNC, and Villanova were among his college choices - he seriously started thinking about going straight to the NBA after Kevin Garnett did the same thing in 1995.
He ultimately did just that; since the prep-to-pro route was highly unusual at the time, Kobe got a ton of publicity for it. The Lakers were keen on signing him; prior to the draft, they worked him out and scrimmaged him against former star Michael Cooper and Larry Drew; his impressive performance convinced Los Angeles to draft Bryant.
His career speaks for itself: three straight titles alongside Shaquille O’Neal between 2000 and 2002, becoming the youngest player to win three championships; then another two on his own in 2009 and 2010. He was the Lakers’ all-time leading scorer, with 33,643 points, surpassing none other than Jerry West — the man immortalized in the NBA’s logo. Two Olympic gold medals, in 2008 and 2012. Most All-Star Game MVPs; the only player in NBA history to score at least 600 points in the postseason for three consecutive years (2008-10).
And in his final game ever, he scored 60 points.
But Kobe always seemed bigger than basketball. He became the first athlete to win an Oscar, when his animated short film, Dear Basketball, won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. The short, based on his retirement letter, explored new animation techniques. He was also forging a new career as a storyteller, coming up with a children’s book that became a New York Times best seller.
Seeing all that cut short, with such pointless suddenness, is what made his death Sunday so shocking. No one, and I mean absolutely no one, was steeled for his passing. It was a gut punch. Kobe Bryant wasn’t going to hang out on the set of NBA shows. He was going to have a second act and be more than an athlete. He was going to be an entertainment mogul, he was going to forge a far more interesting life than we had any reason to expect.
Which is why so many people are loath to talk about this. We quail from speaking ill of the dead; never more so than when death comes surprisingly.
Yes, Kobe Bryant raped a woman. We shouldn’t forget that. Reading that Daily Beast report, it’s not possible to come to any other conclusion but that in 2003, Bryant sexually assaulted a woman. We can’t deny that, and we shouldn’t brush it aside. It’s impossible to read the legal documents in that case, and not come away just utterly repulsed and disgusted.
The details of the incident are heinous: blood and semen evidence, vaginal tearing consistent with sexual assault, bruising on the accuser’s neck, and blood on Bryant’s shirt. The criminal case was dropped when his accuser refused to testify in public, after Bryant’s team leaked her name, brought up her sexual history to deflect from Bryant’s culpability, and questioned her mental stability. Kobe also weirdly dimed on Shaquille O’Neal when he was being questioned by the police, claiming that he’d spent a million dollars buying things for women to bury stuff.
Even his court-agreed, lawyerly-drafted apology reads like a confession of sorts:
“No money has been paid to this woman. She has agreed that this statement will not be used against me in the civil case. Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did. After months of reviewing discovery, listening to her attorney, and even her testimony in person, I now understand how she feels that she did not consent to this encounter.” (emphasis added)
And Kobe’s reaction — to nickname himself the “Black Mamba”, a persona that he adopted so that he could “destroy” people who got in his way (something he explained in the documentary Muse) — was incredibly disturbing.
But we shouldn’t speak of it now! Well, we didn’t speak of it in life; if we’re not to speak of it now, if we’re not to mention it now, then when?
Saying this, noting this fact — that Kobe Bryant raped a woman — doesn’t negate his greatness as a player, nor his commitment to his wife and daughters. It doesn’t negate the grief we feel at seeing such a life cut short so senselessly. We can do all these things. If we’re going to mourn and celebrate the life of Kobe, then we have to tell the whole story — all of it, the good; the bad; the ugly.
Kobe was both a brilliant performer — and a flawed man. That’s the entire story.