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Kobe Bryant Talked About His 2003 Sexual Assault Charge, Which Is Something Kobe Bryant Never Talks About

Understandably, Kobe Bryant doesn’t talk much about the low point of his life: the sexual assault charges levied against him in 2003. Those charges, of course, were later dropped without a trial getting fully underway, but he still publicly admitted to adultery and had the prospect of a Kobe Bryant rape trial scrutinized for over a year, which would be a low point for just about anyone.

Now, nine years, and 81-point game, and two titles later, you hardly hear the sexual assault charges mentioned at all, almost like people forgot they ever happened. One could definitely make an argument that this is a not-so-good thing, but today, no one has to. That’s because tons of people are thinking about those charges… because Kobe opened up about them himself to Graham Bensinger. Or, more specifically, he opened up about how facing those charges forced him to grow as a person, and what exactly it was like to face charges like that:

Of course, the process Kobe describes above was tough on many other people too (which he acknowledges), but there’s no question it wasn’t easy to be him during that time period. And to hear him talk about the feelings he had that “this dark time is just never going to be over” – it’s a major departure from the cocksure Kobe we know. Or the one we think we know, anyway. There’s a human being with doubts and fears underlying that maniacal competitiveness – otherwise, we guess, the maniacal competitiveness never would have come to be.

Also interesting from Kobe’s chat with Bensinger: he said he might only play two more years. While that would mean retiring at 35 and most likely with some good basketball left in the tank, he’ll have played 18 seasons by then (are we the only ones who find that hard to believe?) and accomplished just about everything a player can accomplish. Even so, we still find the idea that he hangs it up at 35, and possibly leaves the NBA’s all-time scoring record on the table if he can hang on long enough, hard to believe. See that portion of the interview below, and more segments are here.