RIP Kobe Bryant

[Timsup2nothin]

When they were mourning him on the morning news my wife said in a pretty neutral tone, "isnt that the guy who raped somebody? Now we're pretending he was awesome? Ok." That's about as feral as I've seen irl and she's no SJW.

I don't think many really think you're a rape apologist for liking him. That's pretty extreme. I just think people who aren't obsessed with basketball remember that scandal and are wierded out about the veneration.

Better to just forget him.

Maybe that's how it is in Michigan. LA is an entirely different animal. Whether you are "obsessed with basketball" or not, in LA you can't really avoid being aware of the Lakers. If you wandered the streets saying "name an LA sports team" the overwhelming majority of people would name the Lakers, no matter what sport they might call themselves a fan of* or even if they are just not a sports fan at all. And for twenty years "aware of the Lakers" meant "aware of Kobe Bryant." So chances of "just forget him" are pretty much slim to nil here. Around here what has actually been forgotten is the decades old scandal. I actually stopped and thought "oh, yeah, that," when it came up. There's been like five thousand news cycles since then, and he has been prominent in several hundred of them, so it just sort of faded away.

*there are baseball fans, who would likely name the Dodgers, but at a guess they would be less than one in ten.

 

[Socrates99]

Maybe that's how it is in Michigan. LA is an entirely different animal. Whether you are "obsessed with basketball" or not, in LA you can't really avoid being aware of the Lakers. If you wandered the streets saying "name an LA sports team" the overwhelming majority of people would name the Lakers, no matter what sport they might call themselves a fan of* or even if they are just not a sports fan at all. And for twenty years "aware of the Lakers" meant "aware of Kobe Bryant." So chances of "just forget him" are pretty much slim to nil here. Around here what has actually been forgotten is the decades old scandal. I actually stopped and thought "oh, yeah, that," when it came up. There's been like five thousand news cycles since then, and he has been prominent in several hundred of them, so it just sort of faded away.

*there are baseball fans, who would likely name the Dodgers, but at a guess they would be less than one in ten.

Hard to tell. Isiah Thomas, Grant Hill, Barry Sanders, Steve Yzerman, etc never had that scandal.

At the same time Pittsburgh fans really tried to ignore allegations about Ben Roethlisberger, Michael Jackson fans are still in denial and R Kelly still weirdly has support. Bill Cosby still has fans. I get it, when hes your guy you're more willing to look past indiscretions.

Personally I think Kobe's thing was pretty minor. Its likely he was rarely denied and got used to that. Then just made a poor decision when he was. At least there didn't seem to be a pattern anyway.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Hard to tell. Isiah Thomas, Grant Hill, Barry Sanders, Steve Yzerman, etc never had that scandal.

At the same time Pittsburgh fans really tried to ignore allegations about Ben Roethlisberger, Michael Jackson fans are still in denial and R Kelly still weirdly has support. Bill Cosby still has fans. I get it, when hes your guy you're more willing to look past indiscretions.

Personally I think Kobe's thing was pretty minor. Its likely he was rarely denied and got used to that. Then just made a poor decision when he was. At least there didn't seem to be a pattern anyway.

That helped demonstrate my point. I wanted to give some sort of counter example last night, but for the life of me couldn't name a Michigan athlete. I knew there were Pistons, and Lions, and heck, I was a Red Wings fan for years but hockey completely slipped my mind. From LA Barry Sanders is a great player. Maybe non-football fans in LA hear of him some Thanksgiving day. He makes the top story on sports when he retires. If there had been some inconclusive scandal early on maybe that would be all the average not a sports fan would remember about him in Los Angeles. But would he be "just forgotten" in Detroit?

 

[Socrates99]

That helped demonstrate my point. I wanted to give some sort of counter example last night, but for the life of me couldn't name a Michigan athlete. I knew there were Pistons, and Lions, and heck, I was a Red Wings fan for years but hockey completely slipped my mind. From LA Barry Sanders is a great player. Maybe non-football fans in LA hear of him some Thanksgiving day. He makes the top story on sports when he retires. If there had been some inconclusive scandal early on maybe that would be all the average not a sports fan would remember about him in Los Angeles. But would he be "just forgotten" in Detroit?

That's why I said hard to tell. Dennis Rodman played for Detroit during those Bad Boy years and hes had groping and theft scandals. Hes also been a weirdo and buddy buddy with Chairman Kim. It's hard to find fans around here, maybe an older crowd in Detroit? At any rate he certainly wont get lionized in a tearful sendoff. Only problem is hes not on par with Kobe which is why I tried to come up with names that were at least close in their respective sports.

Barry might not be a good example for your case. There were a lot of angry lions fans that thought he was just cashing out with his early retirement. The guy still collected checks from the team after quitting because of his contract. There are people still bitter about that. Not exactly rape but yeah, bad actions can sour people's opinions.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

That's why I said hard to tell. Dennis Rodman played for Detroit during those Bad Boy years and hes had groping and theft scandals. Hes also been a weirdo and buddy buddy with Chairman Kim. It's hard to find fans around here, maybe an older crowd in Detroit? At any rate he certainly wont get lionized in a tearful sendoff. Only problem is hes not on par with Kobe which is why I tried to come up with names that were at least close in their respective sports.

Barry might not be a good example for your case. There were a lot of angry lions fans that thought he was just cashing out with his early retirement. The guy still collected checks from the team after quitting because of his contract. There are people still bitter about that. Not exactly rape but yeah, bad actions can sour people's opinions.

Yeah. The difference there would be ending the career badly rather than having the scandal at the beginning of twenty years of piling news over it. I was actually thinking Yzerman is probably the closer parallel. I would guess that if Detroit identifies more with one team than all the others it has to be the Wings (I once saw a Lions home game on television where for most of the second half the fans were derisively chanting "let's go Red Wings" so loud that you could hear them over the announcers microphones), and I know when Yzerman retired from playing he didn't just disappear since he was involved in management with the Wings. Even post retirement Kobe Bryant was part of Los Angeles...building a business empire, promoting charities, showing up at Laker games. He wasn't gone, so definitely not forgotten...or likely to be any time soon.

 

[Kaitzilla]

I haven't read about the rape issue at all.

The Daily Beast has a pretty good story with all the details, but I can't link it.

Besides committing adultery, Kobe said this:

According to the police report, while he was being questioned by the officers about the alleged sexual assault, Bryant said, “I should have done what Shaq does,” adding, “Shaq gives them money or buys them cars, he has already spent one million dollars.”
The report added, “Kobe stated that Shaq does this to keep the girls quiet.”

Kobe did in fact end up settling with the woman, and she hasn't said a peep in 16 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_Bryant_sexual_assault_case

In August 2004, the accuser filed a civil lawsuit against Bryant over the incident.[22] In March 2005, the two parties settled that lawsuit. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed to the public.[23] The Los Angeles Times reported that legal experts estimated the settlement was more than $2.5 million.[24]

 

[Cloud_Strife]

The words of a truly innocent man

 

[Kaitzilla]

This seems to be the main thing that got Kobe into trouble.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_Bryant_sexual_assault_case

Bryant admitted to having sexual intercourse with her, but stated that the sex was consensual.[2] When asked about bruises on the accuser's neck, Bryant admitted to "strangling" her during the encounter, stating that he held her "from the back" "around her neck", that strangling during sex was his "thing" and that he had a pattern of strangling a different sex partner (not his wife) during their recurring sexual encounters. When asked how hard he was holding onto her neck, Bryant stated, "My hands are strong. I don't know." Bryant stated that he assumed consent for sex because of the accuser's body language.[3][4]

See, it probably was consensual until he started strangling her with mild force.
Then when it wasn't consensual, she was either too scared to withdraw consent, couldn't run away because too scared of getting choked for real, or said no too softly because of said choking.
Kobe's main concern later on was keeping the whole thing secret from his wife until he realized she really thought he raped her.

I can see how the whole thing went wrong.

In addition to the woman's moral character and reputation being challenged by Bryant's defense lawyer, she received death threats and hate mail[18] and her identity was leaked multiple times.[19]

On September 1, 2004, Eagle County District Judge Terry Ruckriegle dismissed the charges against Bryant, after prosecutors spent more than $200,000 preparing for trial, because his accuser informed them that she was unwilling to testify.[20]

Ugh

 

[Kyriakos]

Well, certainly with such a case it isn't that good to dwell for long on Kobe. But at any rate he is gone now, and celebrities don't really matter after they are gone.

 

[Arakhor]

Moderator Action: Trivialising rape is never appropriate, whether at CFC or elsewhere. We certainly don't need to know at what point anyone would consider prostitution either.

 

[Kyriakos]

Well, one can wonder what will happen when the mailman dies.

I mean at least Kobe didn't rape a 13-year old.

The Nba clearly didn't give af, though. Karl made endless millions and got to the HOF.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

To those defending this man imagine if that had been your child who he tried to plant his demon seed in

 

[hobbsyoyo]

They had a final memorial service yesterday that was quite a moving show of unity for the community. Alicia Keys played Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and it was emotional.