Pittsburgh Sports Report - Blurred Lines. Focus of Fans, Athletes Changing By Rob Rossi

Pittsburgh Sports Report
June 2004

Blurred Lines
Focus of Fans, Athletes Changing
By Rob Rossi

"I've never been as compelled to watch the Lakers as I am this season. And this is because - somehow - I feel like I will be able to deduce the guilt or innocence of Kobe Bryant by watching him play basketball." [Chuck Klosterman, Esquire columnist, in "The Truth About Kobe" (Dec. 2003).]

Argue if you must whether or not Kobe Bryant is a basketball player, an entertainer or a man facing rape charges - just understand that, in the end, he is all of the above, and that is what makes him so entertaining and utterly necessary.

He is hero. He is villain. The fact that on a basketball court, he can do what others only dare dream has nothing to do with America's fascination with him.

Right here, right now, in the sixth month of 2004, Kobe Bryant is the blurred line between sports and entertainment. In this reality TV-addicted society, nobody is more "reality" than the Lakers' much-maligned and often magnificent superstar. There he is every evening, holding his baby girl while talking to reporters about dropping dimes over some faceless defender following another Lakers' win that followed another awful afternoon court appearance. Donald Trump can eat his heart out, Michael Jordan's "Apprentice" has taken over the "Must-See TV" world.

As once was the case with Jordan, casual fans can't get enough of Bryant. This NBA season was his, to the point that even couldn't-care-less Pittsburghers caught themselves checking out Lakers' games on the bar television set.

America was in love with Michael Jordan. But wasn't America in love with Michael Jackson, too? Bryant might actually end up being the next both.

"It struck me that this was such a modern situation, I couldn't recall anything that was similar to this," Klosterman says of the Bryant situation. "Kobe was going to play the entire regular season and playoffs with these allegations hanging over him... That's going to affect every moment I watch him play."

Conflict, struggle, anguish, heroics - these make entertaining theater. Sports, at its best and worst, is entertaining theater.

So, what's the difference?

Disappearing Line

"Sports is entertainment. I don't how to define it any different way," argues John Steigerwald, veteran KDKA-TV sportscaster and a fixture on the local sports scene since 1978. "One of the problems is that some people take sports too seriously.

"You can have a serious discussion about sports, but you come to a point where you have to keep in mind what you're covering is totally meaningless."

It is, but it isn't, all the same.

Bryant's ability to on five different occasions spend an afternoon in court and then go all His Airness on the court that very night proved remarkable examples of professional athleticism at its most astonishing and unfathomable level. And, yeah, when spliced together in neat "SportsCenter" segments, the jet-setting court-to-court coverage was fun to watch.

But even Bryant's supporters can understand why some people argue that marveling at his post-hearing heroics is totally missing the point.

Maybe not.

"Sports is a diversion to 99-percent of the public," insists John Walsh, executive vice-president/executive editor at ESPN. "We try to understand that people come to ESPN to get away from all the other stuff."

Americans have long turned to sports for much-needed distractions from harsh reality. And even though Walsh is dead-on when assessing that the appeal of sports is its "unscripted drama," the coverage of sports seems more scripted than ever. And no different than, say, Joan Rivers assessing celebrity fashion sense for E!, live from the red carpet on Oscar Night.

Often written of Michael Jordan was that he transcended sports, but his game had nothing to do with his becoming a Pop Culture god. He achieved such stature because, for some impossible-to-define reason, people were captivated by his presence.

He was Curt Kobain, and the Bulls were his Nirvana - more a cultural phenomena than a basketball team.

"The '90s Bulls are pure examples of this blurring of lines between sports and entertainment - they were huge, huge stars, even off the court," believes Klosterman. "And it's just carried on. Take away what they do for a living, and it's pretty hard see the difference between NBA and hip-hop stars - they live the same way."

Bigger-than-life.