This is a Kobe Tribute….Paying homage to someone who was truly great is an incredible honor and experience.
You tap into your feelings about them in ways you had not. You have revelations around what their life meant to you and how they touched you in ways you didn’t even realize.
In the aftermath of a sort of greatness that comes around a few times perhaps in a lifetime we honor that greatness.
Leaving the world and the world paying homage, I feel as a writer and admirer I should share my thoughts on the passing of Kobe Bryant.
While I’ve always been a basketball fan, I was never particularly a Kobe Bryant fan. There was something about him that always seemed to irk me and no it was not my presumptions of the rape charges. I will address that however shortly and how poorly misconstrued that whole aspect of his being and life actually is. Unnerving so definitely needing to be addressed.
I realize now after the fact the aspects of Kobe that irked me were glimpses of his greatness. The cockiness was perturbing to a degree that I was unable to give him due credit. He was just so confident that he seemed to always be walking that fine line between confidence and arrogance. And it was both. And let me say he is excused and allowed even to be arrogant. The arrogance and cockiness was actually confidence that was portraying greatness.
That’s what it really was. There are those who are arrogant. There are those who are confident and there are those who are so confident because the prevalence of greatness is so profound that they like Kobe can be arrogant and still adored.
It’s the Lebron James factor. With exceptional greatness comes an air of pride, cockiness, owning it.
The legend of Kobe leaves us with so much – his dedication and discipline to greatness. His short life and example of how to forge ahead and make the most of each and every day.
He worked harder than most. He accomplished a lot. He is an example of what self-belief and discipline can manifest. Let us use the awesome parts of him to learn from, to self motivate, to move powerfully through life.
And now here’s another take that you don’t hear a lot or you do, but not exactly as I will share it here.
As a journalist I know first hand how much adoration and fanfare surrounds athletes. And while your average athlete or bench warmer gets a lot of game from women and men who admire, adore, and would easily hook up with, more than these guys can handle. I say guys because women athletes do not have men throwing themselves at them for the night let’s say.
Pro-athletes lead rockstar lives. They make a lot of money. They are famous. They get the VIP treatment wherever they go and they have hundreds of thousands of women, young and old, smart and not so bright throwing themselves at their feet.
Hooking up is not a hard job. And when you’re Kobe it’s even easier. You get more than you can handle. Now here’s the thing, again as a journalist we need to look at all sides of a story before jumping to conclusions, before alleging, and accusing.
Kobe Bryant was accused of rape by a women he hooked up with, had consensual sex with in a hotel room. She was young and most girls her age would jump at the chance. She did just that.
There was no screaming. No signs of assault. There was evidence to prove she had been intimate with another man the very next day which is generally not what a victim of rape tends to do. I’m a victim of assault so please keep the comments at bay here.
I’m also a fair person who is not just going to assume the worst or if we want to bring race into this, let us because the race card was dealt.
Here’s where the Kobe rape charges don’t add up. The alleged victim, never fought or screamed. She quietly allowed herself to be raped. And while not all women fight and scream if you want to accuse someone of something then you want to have the person pay and not with a sum of money.
If you are alleging you’ve been raped and you go to the authorities then you’re found with another man’s semen inside of you after testing and then you decide to drop the charges and not testify and accept a sum of money to go be quiet there’s a hint of malice here. A hint of a set up – or waking up realizing you just slept with Kobe Bryant and there is a way for you to profit monetarily from this.
If I’m raped and I want to accuse someone of it then I proceed and I follow through with the notion that the person pays by being convicted and then has some other sort of consequences to adhere to.
It’s something to be considered. Again as a journalist it is my job to not blindly accuse, but look at the circumstances and the outcome and come up with conclusion based on that.
Sad that this is part of his story, but one thing I will say I always defended the allegations against Kobe because it was just too misconstrued to be anything other then an opportunity to use his legend to benefit monetarily.
Let’s honor the good he did in this world and not let someone’s shortsightedness rob him of the profound legacy he left.
