It used to be so easy for Kobe Bryant.
In his world, a simple glance at the basketball scoreboard was enough to figure out who won and who lost.
Bryant could soar down the baseline for another dunk with millions cheering him on. He could cry after a playoff loss, with fans tearing up in sympathy.
Bryant, it seemed, was the perfect NBA superstar: Brilliant on the court, charming off of it. He was a model citizen with a growing family.
It took only one night -- really, only five minutes -- at a mountain lodge to change everything.
There's not much to cheer about now. And there's little reason to be sympathetic.
He's playing in another court, where the rules are different. In this court there are no dunks, no 3-pointers at the buzzer, no Los Angeles Lakers teammates to help out.
There are no winners, only losers.
With each court appearance, Bryant must realize that, though it is difficult to tell as he sits stoically between his lawyers listening to the sordid details of a young woman's brief encounter with a superstar.
It may wreck his life. It has already wrecked his reputation.
At best, Bryant is a boorish, arrogant athlete so caught up with himself that he expected a woman to have sex with him barely 20 minutes after they met. At worst, he's a rapist who forced the woman to kiss his penis before allowing her to leave his room.
And the woman who says he raped her? She's already been portrayed as someone who has sex freely, and who was so enamored with meeting a celebrity that she willingly wrapped her arms around Bryant and began kissing him in his room.
She hasn't even taken the stand, but the world already knows she wore panties with another man's sperm on them to her rape exam.
If a judge decides Monday to send the case to trial, Bryant will have to play a once-promising NBA season facing a charge that could send him to prison for life, fans taunting him on the road and his endorsements gone.
Already, his teammates seem to be distancing themselves from a player who helped the Lakers win three straight NBA titles. And because Bryant's attorneys went ahead with the preliminary hearing, the public saw him portrayed as a rapist whose only concern seemed to be whether the woman would tell on him.
For Bryant's accuser, the upcoming months might be even worse. Cynics will say she's a money-grubber, though there's no evidence she has tried to make a penny off of Bryant. They'll portray her as someone craving attention, even though she's gone into hiding and hasn't uttered a word.
Worse yet, she will have to live for months with the fear a defense lawyer will pick apart the worst moments of her life and shred her reputation even further on the witness stand.
In court on Wednesday, Bryant attorney Pamela Mackey was already calling her a liar, something that angers rape counselors who say that only 3 percent of rape allegations turn out to be false.
"I don't think people make this up," said Jill McFadden, executive director of the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault. "Going through what this person is going through, receiving death threats, going through the process of hearing what people thought about her and the defense's tactics that were meant to intimidate her, why on earth would somebody make this up?"
Bryant, of course, has the best lawyers money can buy -- and they're doing their job. They couldn't stop details of the woman's accusations from coming out, but they've been relentless in trying to tear her story and reputation apart.
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