[MavKikiNYC]

SPORTS OF THE TIMES
Young, Gifted and Dancing to Siren's Song
By SELENA ROBERTS


SOON the 14 teenagers selected in last month's N.B.A. draft will be lectured in league seminars about temptation and traps, restraint and repercussions.

But who among those about to enter the most immature of big-time pro leagues — where arrested development can be disguised by a meticulously polished image — will resist the siren's song of instant access.

In essence, this is when urgent gratification meets entitlement to form an immediacy for a player to indulge, when an internal "Hot Now" sign à la Krispy Kreme cues a craving for sugar.

All a player has to do is pick up a phone — or, more likely, to have his buddy dial it for him — to order up a little excitement on the road. What lovely lady would turn down a date with levitating greatness; what starry-eyed woman wouldn't line up for a chance to "Love It Live," as the N.B.A. slogan goes.

"Everyone looks available to them," an Eastern Conference general manager once said on the topic. "All it takes is one error in judgment. They're warned, but do they listen?"

With their teenage attention spans as fragile as gum bubbles, do they retain anything?

Just a few years ago, the Lakers' worldly, multilingual Jordan facsimile, Kobe Bryant, sat through the league's rookie indoctrination. Was he doodling?

Whatever occurred between Bryant and a 19-year old woman from Colorado on June 30 — whether it was rape or consensual sex — he is the one who put his career, team, family and image on the line by placing his libido ahead of the risk.

•
If Bryant had been savvier, he would have discovered what several N.B.A. veterans have said privately over the years: a professional stripper has no strings attached; a relative stranger is the greater danger. In other words, pay up front, not later.

"I did not assault the woman who is accusing me," Bryant said in a statement yesterday. "I made the mistake of adultery."

As if to underscore their marital commitment — or to jump-start the character reparation necessary for Bryant's lucrative life as a product endorser — his wife released a statement almost simultaneously.

"I know that my husband has made a mistake, the mistake of adultery," Vanessa Bryant stated. "He and I will have to deal with that within our marriage and we will do so. He is not a criminal."

But Bryant gave life to that suspicion by taking a dangerous dip in the kind of summertime irresponsibility that has become epidemic for the N.B.A. Along with Bryant, the names of Damon Stoudamire, Darrell Armstrong and Jerry Stackhouse have popped up in police reports since season's end.

This is what happens without a chaperon. Teams hire security officers, some of whom have been known to shadow players in bars, hotel lobbies and restaurants. If a scene looks unsavory, if fans are getting too close, if a known groupie is becoming too friendly, a good security man will usher a player away.

Often, though, a player's personal bodyguard is a chubby pal from the sixth grade who has little more than arm folding and sneering listed on his résumé. Remember, Bryant's bodyguard was with him in Colorado. (Note to Bryant: fire bodyguard.)

Protecting players from themselves is for professionals. A Cleveland Cavaliers official said yesterday that the team was planning to hire a security officer to watch over LeBron James during the preseason. He is already playing in summer-league games, and fans have hidden under cars only to jump out in front of him when the Cavs' team van rolls into a parking lot.

Fans will find their way into a hotel room, too, if no one is watching.

• Players should be their own keepers — and many are heedful of all the warnings posted on the welcome mat — but when they skip college and stroll into the league from high school, the temptation is to stop taking notes.

Bryant ignored the lesson. Now he will have to pay his elite Colorado law team, of John and Patsy Ramsey fame, to outmaneuver Mark Hurlbert, the young district attorney from the slow-drip Colorado county of Eagle. Now he faces a Class 3 felony sexual assault charge that carries a possible prison sentence of four years to life if he is convicted.

As he stood outside a courthouse for a news conference yesterday, Hurlbert said that after reviewing the evidence, "I can prove this case beyond reasonable doubt."

Bryant's future rests on Hurlbert's failing.

"I have so much to live for," Bryant said in his statement. "And by that I do not mean the contracts, or the money, or the fame. I mean my family. I will fight for them."

So strong now, but so weak when it counted.