GlobalCat
12-17-2004, 03:17 AM
The Collapse of Kobe
By HOWARD BECK
Published: December 17, 2004
NY TIMES
Kobe Bryant got everything he wanted. Isn't that what everyone said last summer? Wasn't that the premise when the Los Angeles Lakers gave Bryant, their star guard, a $136 million contract and banished his two greatest tormentors, Shaquille O'Neal and Phil Jackson?
Hollywood was supposed to become an all-Kobe, all-the-time paradise, with Bryant the dominant figure, on and off the court. After eight years of sharing the stage with O'Neal, the superstar center, and five bumpy seasons of playing under Jackson, the superstar coach, Bryant was, finally, indisputably, the center of the Lakers' universe.
Somehow, paradise turned to paradise lost.
And on Wednesday night, Bryant was squirming uncomfortably in his chair, hooked up via satellite, as the ESPN anchor John Saunders confronted him, bluntly, about his "fall from grace." The choice of words by Saunders was a harsh but accurate summation of Bryant's past 17 months.
He has been accused of sexual assault. He has publicly admitted to adultery. He has lost millions of dollars in endorsements. His personal life has been dissected publicly. His popularity has plummeted. And he has been blamed, some say unfairly, for the breakup of the Lakers, the league's reigning dynasty, with three championships since 2000. So there was Bryant, on national television, fiddling with an earpiece and trying for the first time to make amends to a disenchanted public.
"I can't sit up here and say I'm not at fault at all for anything that took place," Bryant said, in a rare mea culpa. "I mean, if I could go back and do some things differently, I would. The Shaq thing, the Phil thing, and all of that. But there's nothing I can do about it now. I can only learn from what took place in the past and just try to move on and just try to do the best job I can and just try and help us win ballgames."
"I've seen," Bryant said, his voice growing tight, "a lot of dark days."
The Lakers, the N.B.A'.s most venerated franchise, and Bryant, formerly its most glorified icon, remain the league's most compelling drama. It's just that in the past few months, the soap-opera subplots are no longer offset by spectacular basketball.
The Lakers were 12-9 going into last night's game with Sacramento, third in the Pacific Division and eighth in the Western Conference, just barely in the playoff picture. Bryant, the league's pre-eminent shooting guard, is struggling to prop up a team constructed largely of role players. He is averaging 27.1 points a game and on pace for career highs in assists (6.8 a game) and rebounds (7.6), but is shooting a career-low 39.7 percent from the field.
Worse, Bryant is again at the center of controversy.
Bryant recently accused Karl Malone, a future Hall of Famer, and a former teammate and friend, of flirting with Bryant's wife, Vanessa. The rift between Bryant and Malone sprang into view over the last week, dragging Bryant and the franchise down another notch.
"This thing is out of control here," a longtime Lakers official bemoaned. "It's a disaster."
Critics and supporters of Bryant believe that his wife, Vanessa, is the source of many of his troubles.
By Bryant's admission, it was his marriage to Vanessa that caused the estrangement from his parents, Joe and Pamela Bryant.
Over time, Bryant's inner circle collapsed. He also became cut off from his two sisters and dumped his agent, Arn Tellem, who had represented Bryant since he came out of high school in 1996.
Now, Bryant's inner circle is a two-person committee: Vanessa Bryant and his agent, Rob Pelinka. As Bryant's relationships with others, including Jackson, eroded, there was no voice of reason to guide him, long-time Lakers staff members said.
The team's troubles had been brewing for years, with Bryant alternately feuding with O'Neal and Jackson, even as the triumvirate combined to make the Lakers perennial championship contenders.
It all melted down last spring, when the Lakers lost to the Detroit Pistons, 4 games to 1, in the N.B.A. finals. The Lakers had five presumed Hall of Famers - Bryant, O'Neal, Malone and the point guard Gary Payton, all guided by Jackson - but they were no match for the more unified Pistons.
A month later, the dynasty was smashed into bits. O'Neal, believing correctly that the Lakers' owner, Jerry Buss, was determined to rebuild around Bryant, demanded a trade. The Lakers sent O'Neal to the Miami Heat.
Jackson, who at the midway point last season told Lakers officials that he could no longer coach Bryant, was not offered a new contract. Payton was traded to Boston, and Malone underwent knee surgery that put his career in doubt, and the Lakers had suddenly been stripped of their vaunted star power. They also lost two valued leaders when Rick Fox was traded (he later retired) and Derek Fisher signed with the Golden State Warriors. The only one left was Bryant.
For several months last season, he boasted to teammates and coaches that he would leave as a free agent, putting everyone in the front office on edge.
When free agency came, Bryant spoke to five other teams and entered into a serious courtship with the Los Angeles Clippers.
Though tempted by the Clippers, Bryant finally re-signed with the Lakers on July 15, a day after O'Neal was traded to Miami. Every day since, Bryant has tried to live down the notion that he was responsible for the team's breakup.
"I didn't chase anybody out," Bryant told ESPN.
That is a decidedly gray area, however, and few people seem to believe Bryant.
"My sense is that it's tough to be owner, coach, G.M. and player," one Western Conference general manager said, referring to Bryant. "He obviously is a great player. It's not a healthy situation." Clearly, Buss chose to rebuild around his younger star, the one with the dazzling moves and the otherworldly dunks, the one who, at 26, was entering his prime and was renowned for his dedication.
The only problem is, this Kobe Bryant was no longer the media darling who graced magazine covers starting at age 18 and made corporate sponsors swoon with his smile and charm.
The battles with Jackson and especially O'Neal, who is wildly popular among N.B.A. players, left Bryant with a bad reputation in the league. The rape charge in the summer of 2003, though dropped this September, left Bryant tarnished everywhere else.
His decline in popularity is starkly reflected in jersey sales, according to data provided by SportScan INFO, which compiles sales information from sporting good retailers across the United States.
In 2002, three versions of Bryant's jersey placed among the top 20 in sales, a combined total of 312,665 jerseys, according to SportScan. In 2003, that figure plummeted to 89,831 before rebounding to 136,964 for the current year.
For the four-week holiday shopping period, Bryant had no jerseys in the top 20.
"The fact that he doesn't have any jerseys right now in the top 10 or even the top 20 is a real fall for Kobe Bryant, a genuine fall," said Neil Schwartz, director of marketing for the SportScan, which is based in West Palm Beach, Fla.
O'Neal and Jackson have criticized Bryant in recent months. The Seattle SuperSonics star Ray Allen described him as a selfish player. In a new song titled "These Are Our Heroes," the rapper Nas mocks Bryant's sexual liaison with a 19-year-old hotel concierge, the woman who later accused him of rape.
"You can't do better than that? The hotel clerk who adjusts the bathroom mat? Now you lose sponsorships that you thought had your back," Nas raps, referring to the abandonment of Bryant by McDonald's and Nutella, among others.
The Lakers' sole concern is Bryant's ability to lift his new teammates. Bryant has been hard on teammates in practice, at times profanely calling out players for a lack of effort or precision.
"I don't think anyone likes him," an agent with a client on the Lakers' roster said. "He's a means to an end."
Long perceived as arrogant and aloof, and known to be intensely stubborn, Bryant is trying too hard to become a leader, a long-time Lakers official said.
"His heart is in the right place," the official said. Team officials say Bryant has been a tireless cheerleader on the court, and sometimes selfless to a fault.
"I don't know what else honestly we could ask from him or what else he could do," another long-time staff member said.
Yet the ill perceptions remain, that Bryant is a bad teammate and a difficult personality. Some believe it will hurt the franchise's ability to attract free agents. But the general manager, Mitch Kupchak, said the team would weather the storms.
"Time has a way of minimizing the media hype surrounding an event," he said. "It just does. It may take six months, it may take a year, but Kobe's going to do the right thing.
"We do the right things as an organization, and it will outlast any quote-unquote hit we've taken the last couple days."
By HOWARD BECK
Published: December 17, 2004
NY TIMES
Kobe Bryant got everything he wanted. Isn't that what everyone said last summer? Wasn't that the premise when the Los Angeles Lakers gave Bryant, their star guard, a $136 million contract and banished his two greatest tormentors, Shaquille O'Neal and Phil Jackson?
Hollywood was supposed to become an all-Kobe, all-the-time paradise, with Bryant the dominant figure, on and off the court. After eight years of sharing the stage with O'Neal, the superstar center, and five bumpy seasons of playing under Jackson, the superstar coach, Bryant was, finally, indisputably, the center of the Lakers' universe.
Somehow, paradise turned to paradise lost.
And on Wednesday night, Bryant was squirming uncomfortably in his chair, hooked up via satellite, as the ESPN anchor John Saunders confronted him, bluntly, about his "fall from grace." The choice of words by Saunders was a harsh but accurate summation of Bryant's past 17 months.
He has been accused of sexual assault. He has publicly admitted to adultery. He has lost millions of dollars in endorsements. His personal life has been dissected publicly. His popularity has plummeted. And he has been blamed, some say unfairly, for the breakup of the Lakers, the league's reigning dynasty, with three championships since 2000. So there was Bryant, on national television, fiddling with an earpiece and trying for the first time to make amends to a disenchanted public.
"I can't sit up here and say I'm not at fault at all for anything that took place," Bryant said, in a rare mea culpa. "I mean, if I could go back and do some things differently, I would. The Shaq thing, the Phil thing, and all of that. But there's nothing I can do about it now. I can only learn from what took place in the past and just try to move on and just try to do the best job I can and just try and help us win ballgames."
"I've seen," Bryant said, his voice growing tight, "a lot of dark days."
The Lakers, the N.B.A'.s most venerated franchise, and Bryant, formerly its most glorified icon, remain the league's most compelling drama. It's just that in the past few months, the soap-opera subplots are no longer offset by spectacular basketball.
The Lakers were 12-9 going into last night's game with Sacramento, third in the Pacific Division and eighth in the Western Conference, just barely in the playoff picture. Bryant, the league's pre-eminent shooting guard, is struggling to prop up a team constructed largely of role players. He is averaging 27.1 points a game and on pace for career highs in assists (6.8 a game) and rebounds (7.6), but is shooting a career-low 39.7 percent from the field.
Worse, Bryant is again at the center of controversy.
Bryant recently accused Karl Malone, a future Hall of Famer, and a former teammate and friend, of flirting with Bryant's wife, Vanessa. The rift between Bryant and Malone sprang into view over the last week, dragging Bryant and the franchise down another notch.
"This thing is out of control here," a longtime Lakers official bemoaned. "It's a disaster."
Critics and supporters of Bryant believe that his wife, Vanessa, is the source of many of his troubles.
By Bryant's admission, it was his marriage to Vanessa that caused the estrangement from his parents, Joe and Pamela Bryant.
Over time, Bryant's inner circle collapsed. He also became cut off from his two sisters and dumped his agent, Arn Tellem, who had represented Bryant since he came out of high school in 1996.
Now, Bryant's inner circle is a two-person committee: Vanessa Bryant and his agent, Rob Pelinka. As Bryant's relationships with others, including Jackson, eroded, there was no voice of reason to guide him, long-time Lakers staff members said.
The team's troubles had been brewing for years, with Bryant alternately feuding with O'Neal and Jackson, even as the triumvirate combined to make the Lakers perennial championship contenders.
It all melted down last spring, when the Lakers lost to the Detroit Pistons, 4 games to 1, in the N.B.A. finals. The Lakers had five presumed Hall of Famers - Bryant, O'Neal, Malone and the point guard Gary Payton, all guided by Jackson - but they were no match for the more unified Pistons.
A month later, the dynasty was smashed into bits. O'Neal, believing correctly that the Lakers' owner, Jerry Buss, was determined to rebuild around Bryant, demanded a trade. The Lakers sent O'Neal to the Miami Heat.
Jackson, who at the midway point last season told Lakers officials that he could no longer coach Bryant, was not offered a new contract. Payton was traded to Boston, and Malone underwent knee surgery that put his career in doubt, and the Lakers had suddenly been stripped of their vaunted star power. They also lost two valued leaders when Rick Fox was traded (he later retired) and Derek Fisher signed with the Golden State Warriors. The only one left was Bryant.
For several months last season, he boasted to teammates and coaches that he would leave as a free agent, putting everyone in the front office on edge.
When free agency came, Bryant spoke to five other teams and entered into a serious courtship with the Los Angeles Clippers.
Though tempted by the Clippers, Bryant finally re-signed with the Lakers on July 15, a day after O'Neal was traded to Miami. Every day since, Bryant has tried to live down the notion that he was responsible for the team's breakup.
"I didn't chase anybody out," Bryant told ESPN.
That is a decidedly gray area, however, and few people seem to believe Bryant.
"My sense is that it's tough to be owner, coach, G.M. and player," one Western Conference general manager said, referring to Bryant. "He obviously is a great player. It's not a healthy situation." Clearly, Buss chose to rebuild around his younger star, the one with the dazzling moves and the otherworldly dunks, the one who, at 26, was entering his prime and was renowned for his dedication.
The only problem is, this Kobe Bryant was no longer the media darling who graced magazine covers starting at age 18 and made corporate sponsors swoon with his smile and charm.
The battles with Jackson and especially O'Neal, who is wildly popular among N.B.A. players, left Bryant with a bad reputation in the league. The rape charge in the summer of 2003, though dropped this September, left Bryant tarnished everywhere else.
His decline in popularity is starkly reflected in jersey sales, according to data provided by SportScan INFO, which compiles sales information from sporting good retailers across the United States.
In 2002, three versions of Bryant's jersey placed among the top 20 in sales, a combined total of 312,665 jerseys, according to SportScan. In 2003, that figure plummeted to 89,831 before rebounding to 136,964 for the current year.
For the four-week holiday shopping period, Bryant had no jerseys in the top 20.
"The fact that he doesn't have any jerseys right now in the top 10 or even the top 20 is a real fall for Kobe Bryant, a genuine fall," said Neil Schwartz, director of marketing for the SportScan, which is based in West Palm Beach, Fla.
O'Neal and Jackson have criticized Bryant in recent months. The Seattle SuperSonics star Ray Allen described him as a selfish player. In a new song titled "These Are Our Heroes," the rapper Nas mocks Bryant's sexual liaison with a 19-year-old hotel concierge, the woman who later accused him of rape.
"You can't do better than that? The hotel clerk who adjusts the bathroom mat? Now you lose sponsorships that you thought had your back," Nas raps, referring to the abandonment of Bryant by McDonald's and Nutella, among others.
The Lakers' sole concern is Bryant's ability to lift his new teammates. Bryant has been hard on teammates in practice, at times profanely calling out players for a lack of effort or precision.
"I don't think anyone likes him," an agent with a client on the Lakers' roster said. "He's a means to an end."
Long perceived as arrogant and aloof, and known to be intensely stubborn, Bryant is trying too hard to become a leader, a long-time Lakers official said.
"His heart is in the right place," the official said. Team officials say Bryant has been a tireless cheerleader on the court, and sometimes selfless to a fault.
"I don't know what else honestly we could ask from him or what else he could do," another long-time staff member said.
Yet the ill perceptions remain, that Bryant is a bad teammate and a difficult personality. Some believe it will hurt the franchise's ability to attract free agents. But the general manager, Mitch Kupchak, said the team would weather the storms.
"Time has a way of minimizing the media hype surrounding an event," he said. "It just does. It may take six months, it may take a year, but Kobe's going to do the right thing.
"We do the right things as an organization, and it will outlast any quote-unquote hit we've taken the last couple days."