King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Kobe Bryant is breathtaking as the Lakers beat the Spurs to tie their series, but there's no way to know if we're marveling at the exploits of a rapist.

May 12, 2004 | I don't know how to feel when I'm watching Kobe Bryant put on a brilliant performance like the one he turned in Tuesday night in the Lakers' Game 4 win over the Spurs. Bryant scored 42 points, hitting shots from every imaginable angle and rendering San Antonio's superb defense helpless as the Lakers, down by 10 at the half, rallied to even the series with a 98-90 win.

Bryant even made the halftime locker-room speech. "I told the guys to remember it was just a game, to have fun," he said. "Pick up our energy, enjoy the game and we'll be there."

This was all the more remarkable, of course, because Bryant had spent most of Monday and Tuesday in a courtroom in Eagle, Colo., where he pleaded not guilty Tuesday to a charge of felony sexual assault. He flew back to Los Angeles in time to get an hour of sleep in the players lounge before the game, which started about 15 hours after his day began.

"Once again I have to title him as the best player ever," said Lakers center Shaquille O'Neal. That's the Shaquille O'Neal who believes in his big bones that Shaquille O'Neal is the all-time best. The same Shaq who refers to himself as "M.D.E.," for "Most Dominant Ever," and who has complained for years that Bryant's ball-hogging often keeps him from dominating and the team from winning. That's how amazing Bryant was.

I'm not in a mood at the moment to think too hard about whether Bryant is the best player ever, but watching him dazzle the Spurs Tuesday it certainly occurred to me that he's in that conversation. There was a baseline drive against a double-team and a reverse scoop-shot layup that I still can't believe I saw. There was, time and again, Bryant dribbling with that signature, swooping stride -- almost Groucho Marx-like -- taking him anywhere he wanted to go, never mind where the defenders were.

We've all seen great players play great games with the season on the line before, but the story here is the overcoming of adversity, and that's the rub. That adversity, not just the long day and the travel but the prospect of conviction and prison time, may be a rough stretch unfairly brought on to a man whose only "crime" was fooling around on his wife, a cruel thing to do but not deserving of hard time.

But it also may be the consequence of committing a brutal crime, of raping a 19-year-old woman, a woman who is now fighting to have her medical and sexual history kept out of court.

Next page: Who wants to root for a rapist?