By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

If precedent established early in these NBA Playoffs holds true again this week, Kobe Bryant will jet from a court of justice in Colorado to a court with a 3-point arc painted on it in California and hit another 40 points.

In one of them, he will stand solemn and silent in his Sunday best before a judge, accused of a heinous crime.

In the other, he will be high-fived and celebrated as a gravity-defying idol of thousands who wear his jersey and cheer his name.

The deeper the Los Angeles Lakers progress in the playoffs toward a world's championship, the more we are confronted and confounded by these disparate images and what to make of the man who is living them before our eyes.

It has been more than 10 months since the jarring accusations that led to felony sexual assault charges were leveled against one of the NBA's most-embraced stars by a 19-year-old hotel worker. Time, you'd have thought back then certainly, to reconcile the conflicting characters of Bryant the grim defendant and Kobe the grinning magician. Time to sort through the airing of charges and rebuttals.

Is Bryant guilty of adultery but innocent of the felony he's charged with, really the harassed target of his considerable fame and fortune as he and his array of lawyers purport him to be?

If so, he has dealt with it all with remarkable focus and determination for someone whose freedom and future are on the line.

Or, is Bryant another superstar we never really knew, a violent, nobody-tells-me-no rapist the charges make him out to be? If he is, he has wrapped himself in a hermetically sealed cocoon of lies and denial.

These are questions that recur with every arena laser-light introduction and SportsCenter highlight. At the moment, there are probably only two people in the world who know the answers.

One thing is for sure: Never has a modern sports superstar been caught up in a more visible season-long legal conflict. Even as "trial of the century" cases go, this one breaks new ground.

Outside the Eagle, Colo., courtroom, people described as legal experts regularly expound on the merits and strategies of the case, employing often tortured basketball euphemisms to make their points.

Closer to the hardwood, sportscasters make passing reference to Bryant's "legal situation," sometimes making it sound of no more gravity than somebody who happened to slip in his driveway and took him to court.

By sometime next month we will learn whether Bryant can help lead the Lakers to another world championship in spite of everything that is hanging over him. But not until a jury passes its judgment, will we really know what to make of Kobe.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.