On the Media: Kobe, it’s time to man up and own the photo shoot

Kobe, Kobe, Kobe. It must seem like the Week of Judgment that followed your “White Hot� fashion statement should be disappearing, at long last, over the horizon.

You’ve absorbed incredulity, mockery and multiple questions about the way you wrapped yourself all in white for a photo spread in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times Magazine. The enormous blow back and the multiple online parodies must be getting a little old.

But I’m here to tell you, No. 24, you could have turned the spotlight’s glare into a warm glow instead of a punishing laser if you had lived only by the one rule you never seem to forget on the basketball court: Own the moment.

You should have embraced every one of those magazine pictures — Oh White-Scrubbed Spa Victim, Oh Doe-Eyed Bedouin Chief, Oh Baby-Faced Capone in Headband & Fedora. That would have made you the master (or at least not the victim) of the moment. Instead, you fell back on a tiresome locker-room cliché.

Sports reporters asked you how you liked the pictures (which you spent 45 minutes primping and posing for) and you labeled them “too artsy.� You said the pictures had been “doctored up.� You suggested they jumped out at people because of some “Photoshop� sorcery.

Kobe, my man, when you wear the hijab, wear it with pride! Tread down the runway like you storm down the court! Give us a little femme, but spare us the fatale.

Otherwise you sound like one in an endless line of prevaricators and shape shifters. I refer to the jocks, politicians and rock stars all too ready — when they open their mouths and something stupid flies out — to insist they were “misquoted.�

That claim should be as devalued as the drachma. But, still, celebrities toss it around with abandon, apparently oblivious that they’re accusing someone in the media (real human beings, in many cases) of a serious sort of malpractice.

This one photo furor, with its $1,200 cardigan and $650 trousers, doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. So, Kobe, why go all Charles Barkley on us?

Remember Sir Charles, back in the day, building not only his monster game but his outsized persona? He wrote an autobiography with a coauthor, then claimed he had been misquoted. Priceless.

Instead of another tired old duck and dodge, Kobe, how about answering the critics and those not brave enough to slip out of their jeans and Lakers jersey with one of these:

Cosmopolitan: “Rockin’ it from the Kasbah to the Costa del Sol. White-on-white will be the new black.�

Arch: “We’d been leaning toward the Bavarian/Hofbrau House look. But Pau says his German friends tell him those lederhosen chafe like a mother.�

Sociological: “You don’t have to be a metrosexual to drop the Dockers and the Members Only jacket.�

Edgy: “I tried to stay out of the shawl, fellas. But the hair lady was waving around some big ol’ scissors and a blow dryer bigger than Mbenga’s head. I had no alternative.�

Sincere: “I had a lot of fun. Growing up, I never dreamed I’d do something like this. Now get over it, boys.�

Or, Kobe, simply grab a towel courtside during Game 3 against the Jazz. You can re-shroud your head right then and there. Shows us you can laugh at yourself … and do so at a considerable discount, since that Damir Doma hooded scarf you wore goes for about $695.

I’ve got a few other fun details of Kobe’s day playing dress up. But first, a bit of disclosure: The L.A. Times Magazine staff works in the same building I do, two floors below the third-floor newsroom. Before this episode, I had scarcely laid eyes on anyone from the magazine crew.

In fact, I would have missed the Kobe cover spread altogether if not for a heads up from Joel Rubin, a Times reporter who covers the LAPD but spends most of his time worrying about his gimpy old Celtics.

No question, the pics were out of the ordinary, though the Q&A with Kobe didn’t offer many surprises. It seems the multimillionaire thinks it’s pretty cool to fly around in his helicopter and to pose for fashion shoots and to don guises other than his standard issue “golden armor.�

I’ll admit it was mildly interesting that the Greatest Closer in Sports claims that, when the help is not around, he scoops his dog’s poop.

According to folks at the magazine, the Lakers star enjoyed the shoot at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with acclaimed photographer Ruven Afanador. The basketballer conversed in Italian with freelance stylist James Valeri. He didn’t hesitate to move beyond the standard jock wardrobe of suits and sportswear.

“I went for high fashion, not something too easy or too predictable,� said Valeri, 31, who talked to me even though he had sprained his ankle at a rave the night before in his current hometown of New York City. “I thought it was cool and not too mainstream, but not too gay or Twinkie-boy.�

Some people appreciated Valeri’s vision. Writing to The Times’ magazine’s website, a person named Geo lauded Kobe as “incredibly chic� and praised him for the bravery to “drag himself into the 21st century stylistically.�

Others seemed confused. “Are these real photos?� a bemused Derek Fisher, Lakers teammate, asked a gaggle of sportswriters. Other Lakers supported Kobe’s runway turn, or kept their mouths shut. We know who’s the alpha dog on this team.

But the rest of the sports world offered little love. TNT’s Kenny Smith, a former pro hoopster, described the Kobe look as “a combination of Tupac and Liberace.� My colleague, Bill Plaschke, suggested “a cross between Prince and Iman.� One Internet wag pegged the basketball hero as “a young Eartha Kitt in a hat.�

I think Valeri and a few other commentators were right on when they suggested that some of the critics had been shocked out of their comfort zone, seeing “a sports icon, this masculine, macho figure, being fashionized.�

Some knuckleheads (including the Web commenter who sensed the photo shoot might be a conspiracy to undermine the Lakers’ playoff run) apparently don’t understand that Kobe can have his couture moment without threatening our department store comfort zone.

But when he started talking about Photoshopping and doctored photos, Kobe gave aid and comfort to those delicate beings who take any aberration as an assault on the Fortress Manhood. He held his fashion moment at arms length, which wouldn’t have been so bad if at least he had done it with humor or grace.

I e-mailed Afanador who said “the images were retouched for blemishes only, no additional ‘doctoring’ was done.� Like all the others involved in the shoot, the photographer reiterated that Kobe was “an excellent subject.� In the mildest of rebukes, he added that the time lapse between a photo session and publication “can affect perception of what was done or not.�

When all the questioning began this week, Kobe fleetingly acknowledged that he too had “fun� during the shoot. But then he struck the “I Don’t Recognize the Man in Those Photos� stance.

That was his worst pose of all.

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