Hours after his sexual encounter with a hotel employee in Colorado, Kobe Bryant told investigators that Shaquille O'Neal, his Laker teammate at the time, had paid up to $1 million to women to keep them quiet about "situations like this," according to a police report.
An Eagle County, Colo., detective wrote in a report that Bryant made the comment near the end of a lengthy interrogation on July 2, 2003, about allegations that Bryant had raped the woman, then 19, in his resort hotel room.
O'Neal was informed of the comment last September, about two weeks before Laker training camp opened in Hawaii, when prosecution investigators made an unsuccessful attempt to question him. His agent, Perry Rogers, said Tuesday that the allegation in Bryant's statement was untrue and "undeserving of a response."
Much of Bryant's 75-minute interview was tape-recorded, but Det. Doug Winters wrote that the reference to O'Neal came after his partner, Det. Dan Loya, had turned off the recorder.
The incident report, a portion of which was reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, is part of the sealed file in the criminal case that was brought against Bryant last year and dropped this month. A Colorado judge has a motion before him to unseal documents from the case.
"Bryant made a comment to us about what another teammate does in situations like these," Winters wrote. "Bryant stated he should have done what Shaq (Shaquille O'Neal) does. Bryant stated that Shaq would pay his women not to say anything. He stated Shaq has paid up to a million dollars already for situations like this. He stated he, Bryant, treats a woman with respect, therefore they shouldn't say anything."
In a closed court proceeding before the felony charge was dropped, Bryant's attorneys fought successfully to have the reference to O'Neal declared inadmissible at trial, according to a prosecution source.
It is unclear precisely what Bryant meant by the remarks attributed to him. There have been no published reports of O'Neal ever being accused of any sex crime.
He was charged with misdemeanor battery in Orange County, Fla., in 1998 after a 23-year-old Walt Disney World employee claimed he grabbed her neck, but the case was dismissed in 2000. Rogers said Tuesday that he did not know whether O'Neal confronted Bryant about the comments before or during the 2003-04 season. Two members of last season's Laker team, reached by telephone, said they were unaware of Bryant's purported comments and that there had been no obvious change in a relationship that was strained for years.
