Other teammates are less diplomatic: “The way he was so into his wife, you figured he would never stray from her. He was too goody-two-shoes to do that,” says one. “But obviously we didn’t know him as well as we thought.” So secretive was Bryant that he apparently didn’t even tell Laker management that he had gone to Colorado for knee surgery, the reason for his June 30 stay at the Lodge & Spa at Cordillera, where the alleged victim was working at the front desk.
The alienation doesn’t end at the locker-room door: after marrying an 18-year-old high-school student in April 2001, Bryant became temporarily estranged from his parents and two older sisters, who quickly moved back to their hometown of Philadelphia in a show of protest. “His family did not at all approve of the marriage,” says a friend of Bryant’s.
Kobe’s friends say race was small part of the family’s problem: Kobe’s wife, Vanessa, is half Hispanic and half white. But mostly “they thought she had too much control over him and that he was way too wrapped up in her,” the friend says. “He didn’t even get a prenup.
Note: his parents would not attend his wedding.