Say it Ain't So, Kobe

EAGLE COUNTY SHERIFF/HANDOUT
July 4: After the incident, Bryant goes home to California but returns to Colorado two days later for a booking

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At a rape trial, medical science can provide clues as to whether sex may have been consensual. The prosecution's witness list, which for now comprises only medical and law-enforcement personnel, indicates that the county's case will be argued on this "evidence." But in any rape case, the accuser is also on trial. Perhaps for this reason, Hurlbert talked with the young woman for a long time before deciding to prosecute her allegation. He had to be convinced that she was strong enough to defend herself.

Bryant proved last week that he can be a charismatic testifier. But he may have a tougher audience in Eagle County, a Colorado district in which blacks total only 0.3% of the population. Even here, though, Bryant's benign image may trump his color. "Kobe the superstar is in some ways raceless," says Kenneth Shropshire, author of In Black and White: Race and Sports in America. "He could be like Michael Jordan, someone nonurban white folks think of as a superstar, and not primarily a black man."

Color is one possible factor; class is another. There's a financial gulf between those who pay $175,000 for a golf-club membership and those who caddy for them. Most who work in Vail can't afford to live there. Trailer parks are home not just to carhops and maids but to social workers and the police. Could a local jury reflect the resentment the near poor have for the very rich?

Bryant has two constituencies to worry about: 12 jurors and the tens of millions of his fans whose approval pushes Nike, Coca-Cola and McDonald's to pay big bucks for his face. Every athlete's endorsement agreement has a public disrepute clause that lets the sponsor duck out if, as one contract reads, "any party or its principal(s) is indicted on a felony criminal charge of moral turpitude."

Such clauses are usually invoked only on conviction, but even with acquittal a star's luster can be tarnished. "The court of public opinion is a little more fickle than the court of law, and the same due process does not apply," says Kevin Adler, whose Relay Sports and Event Marketing firm represents companies like Nintendo and lego in sports partnerships. "I hate to compare Kobe to O.J., but Simpson was acquitted in his criminal trial, and you don't see him getting a lot of deals these days."

In his press conference, Bryant conceded, "I have a lot at stake" but stressed, "It has nothing to do with the game of basketball...nothing to do with endorsements... This is about our family."

It's about a lot of families: Bryant's and his accuser's and those of the kids who have seen the star as Mr. Nice Guy. A caller to the New York City sports radio station WFAN sounded heartbroken when he said he now had to take away his son's favorite item of sports apparel: his Kobe Bryant No. 8 jersey.

Everybody has heroes. Everybody, some time or other, nurses a glamorous career dream. Bryant's accuser did. Last November she went to Texas and tried out (unsuccessfully) for American Idol. Her audition piece was a Rebecca Lynn Howard country ballad, Forgive. How does it go? "Well you might as well've ripped the life/ Right out of me, right here tonight,/ When through the fallen tears you said,/ 'Can you ever just forgive?'" Those lyrics might be haunting Bryant now not so clean, not so cool and the two women who have shared his favors and his notoriety.