One of America’s great qualities is our willingness to give a second chance, but the universal celebration of Kobe Bryant is weird. Yes, he was acquitted of rape, but it wasn’t like the case of fellow NBA player Juwan Howard. After a grand jury rejected even indicting him — an impressive feat considering grand juries are known for their willingness to indict ham sandwiches — he sued his accuser for defamation, seeking only $1. When the judge found the charges to be so flagrantly false that he awarded him $100,000, Howard pledged it to the D.C. Rape Center. The married father Kobe ultimately reached an out-of-court settlement with his 20-year-old accuser. Did he do anything criminal? Probably not. Really frickin’ sleazy? Hell, yeah.

I fully support Kobe’s right to make a living playing basketball and a comfortable one at that (another great thing about America is you can be a total dick and still get rich, which is why Communism never stood a chance). I just don’t understand why we have to pretend he’s a great guy, inevitably put forward with LeBron James as the face of the NBA. Why must ESPN so tightly embrace people who are clearly questionable human beings? It also happens with baseball, where almost to the end Roger Clemens was celebrated as everything good about the game, despite his knack for disappearing in big situations and generally being a jerk (I listed a few examples for Esquire). Indeed, talking heads made a point of ignoring players like the surefire Hall of Famer Greg Maddux, whose career numbers exceed Clemens’ in many categories and probably weren’t so chemically-assisted, based on Greg’s weight never reaching 200 pounds while the Rocket doubled in size.

Beyond this, Kobe personifies one of the worst recent aspects of our approach to sports. He is an undeniably gifted player, possibly the most exciting since Jordan (some would argue more so, though these people are cretins). But whereas Jordan’s greatest moments were usually against the best competition — his most beloved highlights inevitably came in the Finals, facing fellow Hall of Famers like Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Clyde Drexler, John Stockton, and Karl Malone — Kobe’s at his finest playing a clearly inferior opponent, whom he’ll pummel mercilessly (notably scoring 81 points against a horrendous Toronto Raptors team). When facing worthy foes — as he did with the Detroit Pistons in the 2004 Finals and the Boston Celtics last year — Kobe often vanishes. He is the master of the mismatch, the best at it since Tyson thrilled the world by bludgeoning guys who probably shouldn’t even have been in the ring.

There’s nothing inherently wrong about this. Sports needs people who feed off the weak, as it gives fans a reason to watch otherwise boring games, but it’s troubling when we salute it. This is the impulse that leads fathers to pretend their sons are years younger than they actually are, so they can rack up sweet numbers in Little League. It’s why promising boxers don’t face a real challenger until they’re already 22-0. It’s why the NCAA bends over backward to protect its biggest conferences, when they should really be capable of taking care of themselves. These are all subtle forms of corruption, but if left unchecked they can poison entire sports, with deserving college football teams frozen out of national championship contention, supposedly top fighters utterly crapping out with the first taste of real competition, and your kids playing against a pitcher who looks like he’s closer to his first rectal exam than puberty.

Deserving stars always exist. In the last year the quiet, devout Catholic Filipino Manny Pacquiao took on two bigger and more famous opponents in Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton and pulverized them. (Here are highlights of his fight against the Golden Boy; he was even more impressive against Hatton.) Manny — or, as he is awesomely nicknamed, “Pacman the Destroyer” — has emerged as the most dominant athlete in the world, with the power of a heavyweight packed into the hands of a 140-pounder. He is by all accounts a decent man and a hero to his homeland, taking on all challengers eagerly. Think of him next time Kobe goes for a breakaway dunk in a blowout.

 

Sean Cunningham’s column appears each Wednesday.

 

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