The woman who accused Kobe Bryant of rape has suddenly decided to end her criminal case against him. The prosecutor in the case has now dropped all charges at the behest of Bryant's accuser, though he acknowledges that enough evidence exists to go forward with the trial.
To the many people who have an interest in seeing Bryant succeed it makes little difference whether justice has been served. If I'm honest with myself I guess I'm among those people. I'm an NBA junkie and even though, as a Phoenix Suns fan, I take pleasure in hating the Los Angeles Lakers, I still love to watch Bryant play. In my mind Bryant is Michael Jordan's true on-court successor.
Bryant is also, at best, an avowed adulterer and, at worst, a rapist. In his own words he acknowledges engaging in an act with a woman who he now realizes thought something other than consensual sex was happening. Maybe Bryant didn't commit a crime but at the very least he hurt his family, his fans and his employers with his reckless and selfish behavior.
Phoenix sports fans are no strangers to the agonies of the Bryant case. Jerry Colangelo of the Suns, and formerly of the Diamondbacks has recently dealt with his share of troubled athletes. Jason Kidd, Cliff Robertson, Stephon Marbury, Bobby Chouinard and Mike DiFelice each got into criminal trouble while playing for their respective teams. Eventually Colangelo booted them out of Phoenix sports. In some of these cases team officials cited reasons for a player's departure other than his crime, but the player's collective ejection made an obvious statement.
I hated to see both Kidd and Marbury go; I was a huge fan of both players. But at the same time, I admired Colangelo's willingness to put values above the bottom line--to send the message that these players were indeed role models, despite the contradiction on this point from Colangelo's former employee, Charles Barkley.
Yet none of Colangelo's values prevented the Suns from going after Kobe Bryant in this past NBA off-season, when Bryant became a free agent. I asked Colangelo about Bryant's situation and his possible future as a Sun and his answer was something to the effect that the outcome of Bryant's case wasn't certain. But the outcome of his adultery was already certain. And the Suns could have very well ended up signing a player who would have been convicted of rape. Was Colangelo drawing back his moral line?
Of course he was. But I wasn't throwing out any moral objections either. I wanted Bryant on the Suns and I was perfectly willing to overlook any bad behavior on his part.
Does that make me a hypocrite? Is it a flaw in my character? I don't know. I do know that most sports fans consistently look the other way while professional players conduct themselves with sketchy moral and legal boundaries. The only standard to which we hold them is their performance on the field.
Kobe Bryant will go into the Hall of Fame. Meanwhile we will always know the 19-year-old woman with whom he committed (at the very least) adultery as the women who accused our hero of rape. He'll wear a gold and purple "L" and be cheered. She'll wear a scarlet "A" and be shunned. This is the society that we choose to live in.
Michael Green is pursuing dual graduate degrees in creative writing and film and media studies. Reach him at michael.b.green@asu.edu.
