On Redeem Team, Kobe has most to gain

Wrapped around a rich and famous professional athlete, especially one defined by a me-first core, the stars and stripes can cover a lifetime's worth of blemishes and flaws.

Kobe Bryant surely recognized this when he was asked to play for the United States at the Summer Games in Beijing. Jerry Colangelo, chief elder of USA Basketball, made the call and informed Bryant that this wouldn't be any fly-by experience.

In the wake of Athens, a disaster of Larry Brown's design, Colangelo told Bryant he needed a three-year commitment. "That wasn't a concern for me," Kobe said, "as I was down to play for three years, four years or five years, whatever it was."

On the gold medal stand in Barcelona, a Nike client named Michael Jordan shamefully used the American flag to cover the Reebok label on his uniform. Sixteen years later, Bryant won't use the flag as a weapon in the war against a rival company's bottom line.

He'll use it to recover his own good name.

Bryant is the Redeem Team's No. 1 redemption seeker, the American basketball player with the most to gain. Kobe can't dominate these Olympics the way Michael Phelps can, and he can't touch his countrymen the way Yao Ming or Liu Xiang can.

But by winning a gold medal and reestablishing America's dominance in a sport it was supposed to forever own, Bryant can go a long way toward cleansing his legacy.

No, it shouldn't work this way. Victory is too often mistaken for virtue in the athletic arena; one usually has nothing to do with the other. Kobe's play in Beijing shouldn't impact the way he's perceived — outside of Los Angeles, anyway — after years of relentlessly selfish behavior in the Lakers' employ.

Yet the only thing Americans love more than a winner is a winner wearing red, white and blue. Bryant knows this. He knows that when history measures Brown's losers from Greece against Mike Krzyzewski's prospective gold medalists from Beijing, this will emerge as the most conspicuous fact:

Kobe was there in 2008, and he wasn't there in 2004.

So this is an opportunity for Bryant as big as Beijing itself. That's why he's been quoted as saying an Olympic gold medal would mean more to him than the three NBA titles he won with the aid of Shaquille O'Neal.

"A gold medal is different because you're playing for your country," Bryant said. "There is more at stake I think. When you're playing for an NBA championship you're obviously playing for a brand, you're playing for whatever motivates you, to prove people wrong or whatever it is.

"You put on the USA uniform and you're playing for something that's bigger than all of that. You're representing your country. It's one country going up against the other one to prove who's best at playing this game. To me that holds more weight."

In his first Olympics, Kobe Bryant will try to lead Team USA back to prominence ... and dominance. (Andrew D. Bernstein / Getty Images)

Bryant has put off surgery on an injured finger to play in these Games. He's still beaten up physically and emotionally from a long season that ended so painfully in Boston.

But Kobe wasn't going to miss Beijing any more than Tiger Woods was going to miss the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines. Consider where Bryant was four years ago, when the U.S. prepared to hit Athens without him.

He had been accused of sexual assault. He had lost the title in five games to the Pistons. He had run off Shaq and Phil Jackson, who would call Bryant "uncoachable" in his book.

Bryant would see the assault case dropped and his coach return to the bench. What he wouldn't see was the return of his Laker dynasty.

Kobe thanked team management for standing by him during the Colorado case by eventually demanding a trade. For the viewing pleasure of the YouTube world, he ridiculed Mitch Kupchak for declining to exchange Andrew Bynum for Jason Kidd, a move that would've been even more damaging to the Lakers than the Shaq deal with Miami that Kobe forced them to make.

Bryant ended up in a far better situation than he deserved. Kupchak kept the developing Bynum, made a steal of a deal in the form of Pau Gasol, and gave his megalomaniac megastar a supporting cast strong enough to reach the Finals.

The Celtics prevailed and now Bryant enters a tournament that could do more for him and his image than a fourth NBA ring could've ever done. This is his chance to play for his would-be college coach, Krzyzewski, who couldn't get Bryant to pick Duke over the pros and who returned the favor years later when Kobe tried recruiting him to L.A.

Coach K says he adores Bryant, and you don't need a job on Madison Avenue to understand the Coach K seal of approval means a ton. If Kobe realizes he'll never again be the wholesome and bilingual two-guard next door, he has to believe that a winning performance — shaped by tough defense and an eagerness to share the ball — will improve his marketability and, perhaps, restore him as a pitchman supreme.

This much Bryant has working in his favor: He playing for the most talented Summer Games team in Beijing by far, and it's an ideal time to be an American Olympic star.

China has come under intense scrutiny for its embarrassing human rights record and a long history of denying its citizens the most basic liberties. Against this backdrop, the U.S. athletes will be cast as freedom fighters, or something like that, adding a perceived (if bogus) significance to their victories.

Bryant is expected to be both the Americans' leading scorer and their lockdown defender. He wasn't around in Athens when Allen Iverson and Stephon Marbury and Tim Duncan couldn't find the FIBA formula to save their overmatched coach, Brown, who preferred LeBron James on the bench.

LeBron will be out there this time around, and the world will be watching to see if he can back up the guarantee he made for Time. But guarantee or no guarantee, James doesn't need this one as much as Bryant does.

Kobe never stepped foot in Athens, and he's still the Redeem Team member who requires redemption most.