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Sidelines Kalani Simpson |
Those of us
who knew him
really didn’tH, Kobe, we hardly knew ye.
Really, I mean it. It turns out we hardly knew him at all.
As incensed football coach Jim Mora once told a roomful of reporters -- and through them the public at large -- "You. Don't. Know. You think you know, but you just don't know. And you never ... will."
(Though apparently he was no font of wisdom, either. You'd be amazed at how many Google results come up with the words "Jim Mora" and "don't know" in the same sentence that have nothing to do with the above quote. And let's not even get into the words "Jim Mora" and "diddly poo".)
But while we may bristle at accusations like this when our very own eyes show us a different picture than a coach or athlete is attempting to paint, Mora still has a heck of a point.
We're not in their world, not really. We have no idea what goes on behind closed doors, when the cameras are off and the notepads have long gone away. We have no idea.
And we only know these sports figures by the pictures they paint us. Most of them only tell us what they want us to hear, only show us what they want us to see. No, we don't really know them at all.
That's become the cliché thing to say in recent days, and I am only the latest in a very long line to say it.
But it's so shocking a point in times like these because it's so easy to forget with a smile, a conversation, an autograph, a nice story or an image on TV. It's so easy to forget because we want so badly to believe.
It was fascinating to watch television reporter Jim Gray go from being shocked -- and presented as being close to Kobe -- to saying, just a few days later, that all he had to go on to know the guy was how Kobe Bryant treated him and the rest of the camera crew in those fleeting minutes before practices and after games.
That's all any of us have. Impressions. Snapshots.
And few worked harder at image management than Bryant.
It was Bryant himself who told Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke, "You guys know me, I shouldn't have to say anything."
Maybe he'd even started to believe it himself.
But no, by his own later admission, apparently we didn't know him at all.
The dedicated family man, the wholesome good guy with a smile like the sun, was a hypocrite and a fraud. And that's the good news here.
That would be the best-case scenario here.
No, we don't know these guys. Everyone has said it lately, but now is the time to say it, because we'll forget soon enough. We always do. We're only reminded in times like these:
"You guys know me."
No, we really don't. But every so often, we get a better idea.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com