Kobe Bryant, Assault Charges and the Modern Age of Sports

The police are now investigating the charges that Kobe Bryant, in church, assaulted a man who was taking pictures of Bryant. The point here is not to discuss the details of that case—there are enough articles on the Internet on the subject. I'd like to discuss what all of this really means.

As a general recap, it appears that Kobe Bryant was in church, thought he saw someone taking pictures of him, went over to the young man he suspected, grabbed his cell phone, saw there were no pictures there and gave the camera back.

Now, it's going to be inevitable that there are going to be two sides on this whole discussion: those who attack Kobe and those who defend him—and in doing so, attack the young man who filed assault charges on Kobe.

Before racing to judgement on one side or the other though, is it possible to take a step back and consider that both parties are actual people? I mean, I know that it's so much easier to demonize the world than to consider that in such a scenario there are no demons—but let's just, for grins, consider the scenario from both sides. 

On Kobe's side, he's a world-famous athlete. He has camera crews perpetually following him around. When he doesn't have a camera crew, he's got the entire civilian world snapping pictures with their cell phones.

Now, I know there's the whole notion that one loses their right to privacy by being a public figure. However, that doesn't change the fact that a person can be driven nuts after a while by the constant attention.

When you're in church, possibly praying, the thought could occur to you with yet another picture snapped, "Is nothing sacred anymore?"

Simply from the human perspective, I can understand why Kobe may have snapped. We can talk all we want about what he "should have" done, but walking the proverbial mile in his shoes wouldn't scratch the surface—we'd have to run a marathon in them.

On the other hand, there's the young man who was innocently minding his own business in church when suddenly Kobe Bryant comes over to him, grabs his wrist and snatches his phone out of his hands.

Now set aside for a moment Kobe Bryant the basketball player and just think of Kobe Bryant the man. He's not a big guy by NBA standards, but by normal standards he's a big man. I'm not sure about you, but in most of the rooms I'm in, a 6'6" man who is well over 200 pounds is usually the biggest man there.

If he comes over and snatches my phone out of my hand, it's going to be slightly disconcerting to say the least.

Now factor in that he's one of the most famous people in the world; then figure in that the young man has probably got everyone he knows, and about 100 lawyers, trying to tell him how to capitalize on the incident.

The point is that there actually may have been an actual injury, albeit minor, and a disconcerting altercation that a young man had to deal with; that in itself can be major.

Adding in that Kobe is the person of interest just makes it almost impossible for a young man to handle, particularly when there are, without a doubt, plenty of lawyers in SoCal who are more than willing to try and manipulate the case for money.  

So what does all of this mean? Nothing really as far as Kobe and the young man go. It seems to be an honest misunderstanding that could probably be worked out easily in a normal world. However, the world isn't normal when it comes to Kobe and that's precisely why it means so much and why the young man in question is doubtlessly being manipulated to the nth degree.

We have a society that just loves to be angry. Some are going to want to be angry at Kobe, who just wanted to go to church and be left in peace. Others are going to want to be angry at the young man, who had the audacity to want to go to church and be left in peace. 

But because society is over the top (positively or negatively) in all things Kobe Bryant, he snapped when what he perceived was the 10 millionth straw placed on the camel's back as Kobe wasn't able to go to church in peace. 

The story here isn't whether Kobe was over the top, or whether the young man was over the top, but it's really that society is over the top when it comes to anything related to sports superstars. 

LeBron James dunks on a high school kid and he's wrong; he gets dunked on by a Taiwanese kid and he's wrong. In fact, things are so messed up with LeBron, he could literally host a charity event for children raising millions of dollars and get criticized for it!

Maybe the problem isn't Kobe Bryant, or LeBron James or whomever the next star is that we are going to overreact to. Maybe the problem is us. Let's face it, if all the bloggers, writers and critics on the Internet maintained the standard of morality to which they blame athletes for not abiding, this wouldn't be a story.