Do we like Kobe Bryant?
Our score: 6 out of 10. A huge record of lifting up others, especially women's basketball, set against an apologised-for slur and an unresolved 2003 sexual assault allegation.
Bryant was born in Philadelphia in 1978 and went straight from high school into the 1996 draft, picked 13th and then traded to the Lakers. He stayed there for 20 seasons: five championships, a 2008 MVP award, two Olympic golds and two retired jerseys. He was killed in a helicopter crash in January 2020, aged 41.
The ugly night for the harm test came in April 2011, when TV cameras caught him aiming an anti-gay slur at a referee. The NBA fined him $100,000, and its commissioner called the comment “offensive and inexcusable”. Bryant first said it shouldn't be taken literally and that he'd appeal the fine, which didn't land well with LGBTQ+ groups at the time.
What happened next matters. He apologised by phone to the Human Rights Campaign. In 2013 he publicly called out Twitter users for using a gay slur as an insult, and the Lakers put out a tolerance public service announcement with him in it. That's one real stain, followed by visible effort, and we found no campaigning against LGBTQ+ people, trans people or the planet in the record.
The darker chapter is Colorado in 2003. A 19-year-old hotel worker accused him of rape; he admitted adultery but denied the allegation, and pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors dropped the criminal case in September 2004 after the accuser decided not to testify, and her civil suit was settled out of court in March 2005. Bryant said afterwards he now understood she did not feel she had consented. No court ever decided the allegation either way.
On the good side, he became one of the loudest male stars for women's basketball. He said skilled women could compete in the NBA, backed college players like Sabrina Ionescu, ran youth tournaments and coached a youth team. WNBA star Chiney Ogwumike said he “was always giving back”. After retiring he also won an Oscar for his animated short Dear Basketball.
There is one more thing to say. In 2022 a jury ordered Los Angeles County to pay $31 million to families who sued after deputies and firefighters allegedly took and shared graphic photos from the crash site. Bryant's name is on the case because of what he lost, not what he did, so it doesn't count for or against him here.