In the beginning, he couldn't have cared less.
Kobe Bryant's life changed last summer and his legal situation won't be resolved until his trial, whenever that is. So if the question is, what did the Lakers' 2003-04 season mean to him, the answer, at least at first, was.... Nothing.
In the blink of an eye, the fairy tale ended and the rigid control he had exerted over his privacy was lost. Playing a season under such circumstances seemed unthinkable, requiring him to appear in public and take questions from the press.
Nevertheless, if he were going to get his life back, he knew he had to make a stand, so after a summer of seclusion and a lot of "wavering back and forth," as he noted, he returned.
He would call his Laker uniform his "golden armor," but in the beginning, it didn't protect him from anything, and putting it on didn't make the world go away, as it once had.
In camp, the young man who'd never admitted to concern, much less fear, said he was "terrified." The player who'd been a workout monster was 15 pounds underweight, so far out of shape he couldn't open the exhibition season, acknowledging he'd been too anxious over the summer to do anything.
Events in court were still happening fast. His legal team sought to have the alleged victim testify in a preliminary hearing, hoping to blow the prosecution's case out of the water. When the motion was rejected, Bryant seemed to sink even lower.
He was hanging on by his fingernails. One day after Bryant worked out by himself at the Laker facility, a reporter suggested he must have good days and bad days.
"Every day is a bad day," Bryant said.
He was on his own schedule and the season was incidental. Legal obligations came before Laker games or practices. When necessary, he'd be whisked to Eagle, Colo., by chartered jet [he and the Lakers split the cost].
His opening day had been July 18, when Eagle County Dist. Atty. Mark Hurlbert announced that Bryant would be charged with felony sexual assault, bringing down the curtain on what had been a giddy off-season for the Lakers.
A day after newly acquired Karl Malone and Gary Payton had been formally introduced at Staples Center, the Bryants had their own news conference there, Vanessa watching as her husband asserted his innocence in a breaking voice while confessing to "the sin of adultery" and acknowledging he was "disgusted with myself."
