Once again, money makes difference

Until now, every time I’ve written about the Kobe Bryant case I’ve felt ignorant.

Ignorant about what happened behind closed five-star, hotel-room doors. Ignorant of the legal wanderings the case has taken and where the next turn was. Ignorant about why, with the finish line finally within sight, the woman involved decided not to testify and so the case was dropped on Wednesday.

But now comes the morning after, and with it a truism — if not the whole truth and nothing but the truth — that even a simple sports fan can understand:

Money wins again.

Isn’t that it? Doesn’t that sum up this mess?

Money and more money comes out on top. Money to raise the legal ante. Money to smartly intimidate the opponent. Money to study, to investigate, to create headlines, to raise doubt, to apply pressure like a vise slowly but relentlessly, and mercilessly, squeezing the other side.

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O.J. Simpson money. Ray Lewis money. Kenneth Lay money. Even Martha Stewart money, for that matter, if she would have just followed the advice it bought.

This isn’t to say Kobe was guilty or innocent, a victim or a sexual attacker. We’ll never know. Even if we knew what a jury ruled, we wouldn’t have known.

Only two people know for sure, and they might know only what was going through their minds that night.

But back to the money. Back to the protection it buys, the minds it brings, the fate it helps sway. And that’s the most obvious outcome of this trial. To put it in sports terms, Kobe was on the Dream Team and the prosecutors were, oh, the high school squad from Eagle, Colo.

If Bryant gave his wife a $4 million diamond to stick by his side, how much did he pay these legal strangers not just to stick to his other side, but take up his storyline as well? And how much did the publicly defended accuser have with taxpayer money?

Let’s just say the salary cap and the roster size weren’t in play here.

From the start, these lawyers expertly shifted focus of the trial from Bryant to the accuser, challenging everything from her mental state to her sexual history to Colorado’s tough rape-shield laws. Often they won.

Often, they made the public prosecutors come across as country bumblers.

Often, too, they were helped by a court that made so many errors it underscored the idea whether a fair trial was possible. The final mistake was the release of 200 pages that generated more headlines about the accuser’s sex life.

Kobe is a multi-million-dollar corporation, the way the biggest sports stars are these days. This fueled that, too. This had to protect that. Even as his case rolled on, the Lakers rolled through to the NBA Finals and made people wonder if an accused rapist could be the league’s hero.

Even as his future was in doubt, Kobe put enough pressure on the Lakers to trade Shaquille O’Neal to Miami and then signed a $137 million contract himself.

Even as potential jurors were being questioned this week, Nike was negotiating a deal with Bryant’s Philadelphia-area high school for rights to his jersey. School officials expected about $100,000 a year for five years from the deal.

Of course, there’s a hollow feeling that this ended not with the bang of a gavel but the shrug of shoulders. The woman also had begun a civil suit against Bryant even as the legal wheels ground on, seeking money for pain, suffering and the "public scorn, hatred and ridicule," she had suffered.

This prompted the natural, obvious and possibly rightful conclusion that what she wanted from this was a big paycheck.

To add to the confusion, her civil attorney handed out an "apology" from Bryant in the aftermath of Wednesday.

It all makes me feel ignorant again in writing this.

But on this morning after here's one thing I’m sure of: It’s going to be about money, somehow, some way. Just as this trial always has been. Just as they always seem to be.

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