EDIT: And just for fun, here's a corrective to my use below of the term "complicated." https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/m7qbqx/kobe-bryant-was-no-more-complicated-than-anyone-else. What he said.
The original post (to be clear, I meant in terms of my position as a fan, not in terms of Kobe's character):
Kobe was never one of my favorite players. I was in high school when he and Shaq went on their historic tear through the league and I vastly preferred Shaq's exuberant dominance to Kobe's joyless drive. He always seemed to be trying too hard; that manufactured scowl he adopted later in his career verged on embarrassing. And god help anyone who tries to give themself a nickname, although to his credit he managed to make Black Mamba stick. But even though he might never have been the best player in the league -- Shaq and Tim Duncan were ahead of him early in his career and LeBron and KD late, Steve Nash probably should have won the MVP again the year that Kobe got his consolation one -- he was an undeniably giant presence, a superstar. And an undeniably great player.
A basketball writer I follow on Twitter posted today that one thing Kobe's death is making clear is that people who do not understand the emotional power of sports cannot understand why people are taking the death so hard. That's really true. SRB was trying to tease out of me the other day an explanation for why watching sports live is so important, and she concluded that it's because of the fact that watching live means a fan can share the emotional journey of the game or match with thousands or millions of other people, even if only virtually. That is certainly a big part of it, but there's more to it than that and I couldn't describe it to her in a way that landed. Sports fandom is ineffable, like fandom of any aesthetic pursuit. Why do people love ballet, or the theater, or going to watch their favorite musicians sing live? It's magical, that's why. Watching Kobe cook was, sometimes, magical.
It's especially hard to explain to someone who doesn't like sports why there's this outpouring for Kobe, who raped a 19-year-old in Colorado in 2003, when he was 24. The charges were dropped and he settled a civil suit with her out of court, but in the aftermath he said words to the effect of, "I genuinely thought we were having a consensual encounter, but after reading the court documents and speaking with her lawyers, I understand that it was non-consensual." Non-consensual sex is rape, Kobe raped her, QED.
In this sense Kobe's death and the way he's being memorialized are tied up with #MeToo and society's reckoning with the violence of patriarchy. Do we still get to enjoy public figures who have done terrible crimes? The default to canceling sometimes seems wrong, as it did with Aziz Ansari. I don't think there's a blanket answer. In Kobe's case, he spent the 15 years after the case ended outwardly doing everything he could to be a good husband and father, and of course being a basketball star. He paid the woman he raped some presumably large amount of money and admitted to what he did. As far as I know, it's the only time he was accused of such an act. He was a great basketball player, an inspiration to millions of people, an apparently genuine family man, and, judging by the tears of many NBA players as their games tipped off last night, a valued friend. And practically every time someone brought him up to me in the last 15 years, I said something about Colorado.
So I guess I conclude that any honest memorialization of Kobe's life has to include an acknowledgement that, along with all his accomplishments and good qualities, he raped someone. That it's okay to celebrate the former as long as the latter is not buried. Not breaking any ground there, I don't think. But the reflection is valuable for me as a guidepost in evaluating other public figures. How bad was the crime? That's part of it. We'll hopefully (for the sake of the woman involved) never know the details of Kobe's crime but it was pretty bad. Did the person admit what they did, accept responsibility? In Kobe's case, it seems like he did, or maybe kinda-did. Did the person seem to learn from the experience of committing the crime and to change their behavior accordingly? Seems like Kobe did, or at least was the kind of person who could: He once called a ref a "fucking fag" after being given a foul, and, in response to the outrage, apologized and started working with GLAAD and eventually scolding his own fans for using gay slurs.
I don't know. It's complicated. In any case my heart goes out to his wife and three surviving daughters, and the families of the other people killed.
...
On a completely different note, I've been lucky enough to spend a lot more time than most people riding in helicopters. it's an incredibly cool way to get around. And the pilots and flight engineers at the company I worked for were extremely highly trained, experienced, and cautious professionals. Close to 50% of the flights I was supposed to take over the years were cancelled or cut off early because the pilots had such high standards for flying conditions, especially visibility. I read an eyewitness account of the Kobe crash that made it sound like it might have been caused by a combination of visibility (it was so foggy) and mechanical failure (it didn't sound right). So I'm grateful today for our pilots' hyper-cautiousness.
The original post (to be clear, I meant in terms of my position as a fan, not in terms of Kobe's character):
Kobe was never one of my favorite players. I was in high school when he and Shaq went on their historic tear through the league and I vastly preferred Shaq's exuberant dominance to Kobe's joyless drive. He always seemed to be trying too hard; that manufactured scowl he adopted later in his career verged on embarrassing. And god help anyone who tries to give themself a nickname, although to his credit he managed to make Black Mamba stick. But even though he might never have been the best player in the league -- Shaq and Tim Duncan were ahead of him early in his career and LeBron and KD late, Steve Nash probably should have won the MVP again the year that Kobe got his consolation one -- he was an undeniably giant presence, a superstar. And an undeniably great player.
A basketball writer I follow on Twitter posted today that one thing Kobe's death is making clear is that people who do not understand the emotional power of sports cannot understand why people are taking the death so hard. That's really true. SRB was trying to tease out of me the other day an explanation for why watching sports live is so important, and she concluded that it's because of the fact that watching live means a fan can share the emotional journey of the game or match with thousands or millions of other people, even if only virtually. That is certainly a big part of it, but there's more to it than that and I couldn't describe it to her in a way that landed. Sports fandom is ineffable, like fandom of any aesthetic pursuit. Why do people love ballet, or the theater, or going to watch their favorite musicians sing live? It's magical, that's why. Watching Kobe cook was, sometimes, magical.
It's especially hard to explain to someone who doesn't like sports why there's this outpouring for Kobe, who raped a 19-year-old in Colorado in 2003, when he was 24. The charges were dropped and he settled a civil suit with her out of court, but in the aftermath he said words to the effect of, "I genuinely thought we were having a consensual encounter, but after reading the court documents and speaking with her lawyers, I understand that it was non-consensual." Non-consensual sex is rape, Kobe raped her, QED.
In this sense Kobe's death and the way he's being memorialized are tied up with #MeToo and society's reckoning with the violence of patriarchy. Do we still get to enjoy public figures who have done terrible crimes? The default to canceling sometimes seems wrong, as it did with Aziz Ansari. I don't think there's a blanket answer. In Kobe's case, he spent the 15 years after the case ended outwardly doing everything he could to be a good husband and father, and of course being a basketball star. He paid the woman he raped some presumably large amount of money and admitted to what he did. As far as I know, it's the only time he was accused of such an act. He was a great basketball player, an inspiration to millions of people, an apparently genuine family man, and, judging by the tears of many NBA players as their games tipped off last night, a valued friend. And practically every time someone brought him up to me in the last 15 years, I said something about Colorado.
So I guess I conclude that any honest memorialization of Kobe's life has to include an acknowledgement that, along with all his accomplishments and good qualities, he raped someone. That it's okay to celebrate the former as long as the latter is not buried. Not breaking any ground there, I don't think. But the reflection is valuable for me as a guidepost in evaluating other public figures. How bad was the crime? That's part of it. We'll hopefully (for the sake of the woman involved) never know the details of Kobe's crime but it was pretty bad. Did the person admit what they did, accept responsibility? In Kobe's case, it seems like he did, or maybe kinda-did. Did the person seem to learn from the experience of committing the crime and to change their behavior accordingly? Seems like Kobe did, or at least was the kind of person who could: He once called a ref a "fucking fag" after being given a foul, and, in response to the outrage, apologized and started working with GLAAD and eventually scolding his own fans for using gay slurs.
I don't know. It's complicated. In any case my heart goes out to his wife and three surviving daughters, and the families of the other people killed.
...
On a completely different note, I've been lucky enough to spend a lot more time than most people riding in helicopters. it's an incredibly cool way to get around. And the pilots and flight engineers at the company I worked for were extremely highly trained, experienced, and cautious professionals. Close to 50% of the flights I was supposed to take over the years were cancelled or cut off early because the pilots had such high standards for flying conditions, especially visibility. I read an eyewitness account of the Kobe crash that made it sound like it might have been caused by a combination of visibility (it was so foggy) and mechanical failure (it didn't sound right). So I'm grateful today for our pilots' hyper-cautiousness.
