Bryant’s off-court legacy not so straightforward

News of Kobe Bryant’s death predictably rocked the NBA, which is filled with players who grew up watching Bryant as he won five championships with the Lakers. Fueled by a seemingly endless reservoir of self-confidence, Bryant was a mammoth figure almost from the moment he arrived, at age 17, as the 13th overall pick in the 1996 NBA draft.

Bryant was drafted by the Charlotte Hornets on behalf of the Lakers and did not try — at all — to hide his ambi- tion to surpass the accom- plishments of the legendary Michael Jordan. Charlotte had agreed going into the draft to trade Bryant’s rights to Los Angeles in exchange for the veteran center Vlade Divac.

Over the next 20 seasons, Bryant earned 18 All-Star selections, a regular-season Most Valuable Player Award in 2008 and two NBA finals MVP awards to go with his five championship rings. Amid all of that, a sexual assault allega- tion against him in 2003 would change how many people saw Bryant, though he remained hugely popular among NBA fans and especially Angelenos, for whom he increasingly became synonymous with the Lakers — the only team, despite a trade demand in 2007, that Bryant ever played for.

The trade that made Bryant a Laker was engineered by the team’s general manager at the time, Jerry West, who was instantly smitten by Bryant’s fearlessness and prodigious talent. A standout at Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, Pa., outside Philadelphia, Bryant had auditioned for the Lakers in a predraft workout featuring a series of one-on-one drills against the former Lakers defensive ace Michael Cooper, then a 40-year-old assistant coach.

Only a few high schoolers had gone straight to the NBA at that point — and Bryant would be the first guard to do so. But West left the workout early, declaring that he had seen enough. “He’s better than anybody on our team right now,” West famously told fellow Lakers staffers of Bryant’s per- formance.

Bryant indeed helped restore the Lakers to glory — albeit with no shortage of tur- moil along the way. He did so first alongside the Hall of Fame center Shaquille O’Neal for three consecutive drama-filled NBA championships in the 1999-2000, 2000-01 and 200102 seasons, then as the team’s unquestioned fulcrum for two more titles in 2008-09 and 2009-10.

By the time he walked away from the NBA in April 2016, Bryant had built an unmatched legacy that persuaded the Lakers to retire both jersey numbers he wore over two 10-sea- son stretches: No. 8 and No. 24. In perhaps the ultimate Bryant flourish, his 60-point game on the final day of the 201516 regular season upstaged the defending champion Golden State Warriors, who had defeated the Memphis Grizzlies on the same night to secure the best single-season record in league history, 73-9.

Bryant is expected to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in late August, the first time he is eligible.

But Bryant’s reputation was more complicated than all his accolades would suggest. He was charged with felony sexual assault in 2003 stemming from an incident at a Colorado hotel in which Bryant was accused of raping a 19-year-old woman who worked at the property. Prosecutors eventually dropped the case when the woman told them she was unwilling to testify. Bryant later issued an apology, saying he understood that the woman, unlike himself, did not view their encounter as consensual. A lawsuit the woman brought against Bryant was later settled out of court.

Bryant was known for a special ability to play through injuries. The one that managed to stop him was a torn left Achilles’ tendon late in the 2012-13 season. Bryant did not want to accept the on-court diagnosis he received from Gary Vitti, the Lakers athletic trainer.

“I told him it’s ruptured and he’s done,” Vitti said in December 2017. “He said, ‘Can’t you just tape it up?’”