Kobe is Emerging from His Exile

<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">WHETHER THIS was either predictable or good is open to debate, but it is happening. Slowly, almost silently - except, of course, when he drops 62 on somebody and does it in three quarters, as he did to the Mavericks on Tuesday night - Kobe Bryant is making his way back.
It is not even 18 months since the end of the spectacle, when Bryant's rape trial was short-circuited before it began. Back then, he was as notorious a sports star as anyone could imagine. Advertisers dropped him. The public was repulsed by him. An image that had been so carefully crafted over the years - one of culture, of cool, of athletic refinement - was shredded.

Jokes were told at this expense, especially about the ginormous ring he bought his wife in the weeks after the ultimately dropped rape charges became public. His leading role in the breakup of the Shaq-Kobe-Phil Lakers was told in excruciating, unflattering detail.

The people who liked him were reduced to calling him an egotistical phony. The people who hated him had ammunition forever. There were no nuances, no shades of opinion, not anymore. Bryant had become a cartoon character.

Now, though, 2005 is melting into 2006 - and what seemed as if it would be the end for Bryant is slowly becoming a new beginning.

You can pick the point where you believe it might have begun. There are several.

Last summer, Beckett Media did a survey of basketball trading-card prices. LeBron James was clearly No. 1, but Bryant was solidly in second place - his prices more than double those of Shaquille O'Neal, for instance. But it is possible to argue that those prices were more about notoriety, not popularity. So, who knew?

Then, a little later, came the Nike ad in Sports Illustrated. Bryant had been dropped by several advertisers and shunted aside by others in the aftermath of the rape charges, costing him tens of millions of dollars. This ad, in black and white, was his first, tentative step back into the mainstream.

Next? That probably was the promo Bryant did for TNT at the start of this NBA season. It was one of a couple of goofy spots in which comedian Ali G mock-interviewed some NBA players. Kobe-as-comic foil was another step, then, for the league and for a network closely associated with the NBA.

So, it is happening. And, seeing as how the American Sports Nation is really the Absolution Nation - we forgive anything if you're good enough - that is where the 62-point rampage on Tuesday night comes in.

Bryant is a national topic again, at least for a day or so - and it is all about basketball. People are talking about 62 points in three quarters, and whether he should have stayed in the game and gone for a record, and whether he's hogging the ball too much, and on and on. It's all about Kobe and the rock, and not about the rock he bought his wife. It's all about Kobe and Lakers coach Phil Jackson, together again, not estranged, not divorced.
Another step, then. And another.</div>

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