Mixed Mourning

Sand art and image by Zalan Szabo; @zalansz on Instagram

Originally published on LinkedIn

I remember watching Kobe Bryant play live in L.A. not six months after he’d been drafted by the already legendary Lakers, my hometown team. He made a reverse dunk preceded by a superhero-like corkscrew leap that rose up from The Forum floorboards and seemed to unwind in my abdomen with the reverb of the fans’ reaction. I was 19, one year older than the rookie rockstar. The sight was unforgettable and left my companions and me certain we’d witnessed history in the making. 

I also never will forget how I felt reading detailed testimony in transcripts from the rape investigation while working at ABC News years later, some of which resurfaced on the Internet when Bryant retired from the NBA. I was conflicted about the power dynamic that I assumed played a role in what happened, and deeply disturbed by the descriptions of forced sex and signs of injury, bruising on the accuser’s neck the least of them. Was he a monster, responsible for those? I still don’t want to believe so. Was he socially, morally stunted, growing up under dizzying pressure and celebrity so young? Would that even make “it” different? 

Kobe’s power on, and off, a basketball court is indisputable. So too was his ability, I think, to overwhelm and outmaneuver a 19-year-old hotel employee, the imperfect legal system and even fans like me -- among those who, after enough shock and muted disgust, let it be okay to separate Bryant’s athletic prowess and the alleged felony. We watched, cringe-laughed at the SNL skit of the apology and his wife’s bling, the would-be water slide compound and reality TV appearances. We returned to score keeping as usual, letting the proverbial points accumulate in his favor as the time elapsed. Why is this so? Why isn’t it okay?  

To be sure, in recent years, Bryant directed his wealth and energies to admirable endeavors, helping fund the creation of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C., establishing the Black Mamba Academy and Foundation to engage underserved communities in Southern California, youth and veterans; winning an Academy Award. And of course, being a father figure to four daughters, the youngest of whom was born last June. Part of what is so shattering about Bryant’s untimely death is that he was with one of his daughters, 13-year-old Gianna, en route the academy when the fatal helicopter crash occurred.

But despite all of Kobe's noteworthy credits, the 2003 allegation against him, and the investigation and settlement that followed still grip the rim of my memory like a player slow hanging from a hoop, refusing to drop — a flagrant technical foul that I can’t underwrite. 

My husband, whose boyhood home is five minutes from Bryant’s high school, said, “Part of what’s so sad is that I grew up with him...I feel like one of my friends died even though I never met him.” Meanwhile I feel like one of my frenemies did something heinous, and most of us would prefer to forget it. So, it’s “complicated,” “worth talking about,” the spouse agrees after I admit my mixed feelings, for which I requested we turn down ESPN’s increasingly tearful continuous coverage on the death of the 18-time All-Star. (Its online story included three lines about the assault, among them:

“The criminal case was dropped...but Bryant still issued an apology.” Emphasis mine.)

What did any of us really know or want to think about Kobe, off court, that we are couching re-reporting the complaint against him?

What all transpired may have been Vanessa Bryant’s and the victim’s to forgive. Yet I am reliving my consternation, the first sinking pit in my stomach during the discovery phase of the case. I truly wish my only remembrance was the flutter of excitement from the first time I saw Kobe’s preeminence in person. Instead, I consider that I still remember the outfit I wore and the young men who watched with me. What message did the Kobe case impart to generations? What vivid memories haunt his accuser? What would #girldad Kobe tell his daughters about protecting and speaking out for themselves, about public scrutiny and justice?

We may never know. As our global mourning continues and we await the funerals, I’m still sorting this nuance. I am sincerely sorry for his surviving family for their unthinkable loss, but I also wonder about the other survivor of his ugly “adultery.” For me, Kobe and the case in Colorado can never be separate. I don’t hate the player, but I do hate the game of pretending they are.