LeBron, Lakers embrace rape culture for NBA Finals
Deliberatus will from time to time, and at my sole discretion, leave the political realm to talk about other topics like this one.
The death of Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven other souls last January was tragic. In ways almost too numerous to count. With the emerging likelihood that the pilot was disoriented and unable to tell up from down, the final seconds above the hills of Calabasas are too horrific to contemplate.
Deliberatus is not here to challenge the tragedy. As a parent it’s almost more than you can bear to think about. Nor am I going to try to claim Bryant was an unredeemable human being. It’s 2020 so I doubt anyone will give me the benefit of this context, but I want to draw the clear distinction that I’m trashing us here, not Kobe Bryant.
I’m trashing all of us for the way we have allowed ourselves to raise Bryant’s “Mamba mentality” into a level of cultural holiness. Because it’s sick. Sick because of how the Mamba originated and sick because we enabled it among ourselves after his death.
Let’s review history. These are facts:
In 2003, a 19-year-old female employee at a Colorado hotel accused Bryant of rape.
Bryant denied the allegation initially, then admitted the two had sex but claimed it was consensual due to her body language.
The judge in the case dismissed the charges in September 2004, in part because the victim was unwilling to testify.
Bryant and the woman settled a civil case out of court.
Had this happened in the #MeToo era, there’s no doubt the reaction and damage to Bryant’s image would have been exponentially worse. We’re less willing to believe men who say “I thought it was consensual” or “my hands are strong, I don’t know” when the victim has bruises on her neck from supposedly consensual sex. Or when the encounter leaves blood on the man’s clothes. We’re less willing to believe it, but still too willing.
And yet, here we are almost three years after Harvey Weinstein was dethroned and we’re letting Bryant whitewash his legacy by perpetuating the Mamba mentality he invented for himself. The latest disturbing example of which is the Los Angeles Lakers wearing the “Black Mamba” jerseys for Game 5 of the basketball finals. Why? According to ESPN:
"It means something," LeBron James said Thursday. "Something more than just a uniform. It represents an individual who gave the franchise 20 years of his blood, sweat and tears and his dedication to his craft, both on and off the floor, to make that franchise be proud of him, and hopefully vice versa."
Yeah, LeBron, that’s not what it means at all.
The Black Mamba legacy they celebrate on SportsCenter is Bryant came up with the nickname to be a merciless assassin on the court. Because it was a cool thing from Kill Bill.
The real motivation, which rape culture won’t tell you about, is far more gross. Let’s go to the tape. According to CNN, Bryant gave himself the Mamba nickname “to separate his life on and off the court.” In his own words:
“After the Colorado incident, I had every major sponsor drop me, except for Nike. So I’m sitting there thinking, What am I going to do now? My vision was to build a brand and do all these things. Now everybody’s telling me I can’t do it,” he went on. “The name just evokes such a negative emotion. I said, ‘If I create this alter ego, so now when I play this is what’s coming out of your mouth, it separates the personal stuff, right?’ You’re not watching David Banner—you’re watching the Hulk.” Source.
You read that correctly. You’re not watching an accused rapist, you’e watching the Hulk. Bryant invented the Mamba to separate himself from the “negative emotion” tied to the name Kobe Bryant after being accused of rape. Because he wanted to “build a brand.”
What did we do? We let him. He wanted to reclaim his image from a rape allegation and we let him do it. We even let him name his youth sports academy “The Mamba Sports Academy.” How disgusting is that? Parents knowingly sent their kids into a facility named after an athlete’s attempt to dissociate himself from the stink of sexual assault allegations.
Tell me again rape culture doesn’t exist.
How did Kobe get away with it? We let him. Every athlete who wrote “Mamba” on their shoes let him do it. Every athlete who shows up in his jersey to say “long live the Mamba” let him do it. Nike let him do it—speaking of shoes—by releasing Mamba sneakers. [This was back before the company stood for something, apparently.] We let him do it when we hashag #MambaMentality on our tweets.
Over and over again we let him do it. Over and over again we re-victimize a 19-year-old woman.
So when you feel like shaking your head in despair about the rape culture permeating our society, remember the Mamba. Remember all the athletes and icons who aided and abetted a man’s attempt to make us all forget he was accused of sexual assault.
Bryant’s academy removed rape culture its title and is now just The Sports Academy, reportedly at the request of Bryant’s estate. Whatever the reason, it’s the right move. Hopefully society can follow and stop glorifying Bryant’s attempt to distract us from the fact that a 19-year-old woman came away bloody and bruised from their supposedly consensual sexual encounter.