The Soap Opera Behind Bryant-Malone Drama

I’m going to write two words here, and while they might disgust you, I’m going to ask you not to immediately crumple your newspaper and throw it across the room.

OK, here goes: Kobe Bryant.

There’s almost nothing you can say these days as it relates to the Lakers without drawing a line in the stands between the Kobe lovers and the Kobe haters, and now here’s more fodder to ponder.

Both Bryant and Karl Malone -- speaking through his agent, Dwight Manley -- confirmed Saturday night that they had a major falling out involving Bryant’s wife, Vanessa, two weeks before the Bryant radio interview that had supposedly ticked off Malone so much.

Before Saturday night’s game with the Clippers, Bryant listened as I relayed the story that’s going around town, and when I finished, he said, that’s true.

On Nov. 23, the night the Lakers played the Bucks at Staples Center, Vanessa was talking on the phone to Malone’s wife, Kaye. Kaye gave Vanessa her husband’s cellphone number, and Vanessa called Malone, who was sitting at courtside, and invited Malone’s child to join her.

Malone, wearing cowboy boots and a hat, eventually took the child to Vanessa.

Malone hugged Vanessa, and then Vanessa asked -- as Manley recounts this part of the story -- “Hey, cowboy, what are you hunting?”

“She said it twice,” Manley said, “and Karl answered the second time, ‘I’m hunting for little Mexican girls.’ ”

After the game Vanessa told Bryant that Malone had come on to her, and said several inappropriate things. She also told Bryant that she had called Malone’s wife and asked Kaye to get her husband away from her.

Bryant called Malone on his cellphone after the game, and Bryant laid into Malone. Bryant said Malone didn’t have much to say in return and didn’t deny anything.

What’s a husband supposed to do when your wife tells you something like that? Bryant wanted to know as we talked.

Bryant said he was uncomfortable discussing the incident and he would have preferred to keep it quiet, but the New York Post reported this week that Malone was seen giving Vanessa a big hug, and then “somehow Malone managed to cross Vanessa” and got on her “frosty side.”

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AFTER I talked to Bryant, I relayed the same story to Manley and asked for the opportunity to talk to Malone and hear his version.

“Karl wants me to give you two messages,” Manley said after calling Malone. “He never hit on Vanessa, nor would he.... In fact, when he first heard about [the accusation], he said, ‘You have to be kidding me.’

“As for the comments he made to her that offended her personally, he told both her and Kobe that night that he apologized.”

Manley said that after Malone apologized, “Kobe followed that with a string of threats.”

Bryant said he was upset but he said that he made no threats and was only coming to the defense of his wife, and that he told Malone to stay away from his wife.

Bryant said when he did the radio interview with XTRA (690/1150) he never mentioned anything about the simmering feud between the two because he didn’t want to take personal shots at Malone.

Manley said Bryant called the Malone home the next day with more threats, and that Malone’s wife listened in on a speaker phone.

Bryant said that both he and his wife called the Malones the next day in an attempt to work things out but failed.

The Bryants’ second-day phone call and continuing accusations infuriated Malone and that led him to effectively end his relationship with the Lakers. The subsequent radio interview with XTRA allowed the rift between the two to go public without any mention of the soap opera -- until now.

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KOBE BRYANT.

The other day those two words came up while the daughter and I were speaking at the all-girls Marlborough School, and when Miss Radio Personality heard them, she said, “I hate Kobe Bryant.”

Many of the athletes in the room -- ranging from seventh to 12th grade -- began standing, cheering and applauding, which made it difficult to hear me when I told them Miss Radio Personality had no idea what she was talking about.

It’s becoming tougher and tougher to defend Bryant -- even in my own home.

I told Bryant right now in the estimation of many folks he’s the “rat’s behind of the world,” although I don’t think I used the word “behind,” and that he appears to be losing ground in a city he once owned.

“I know,” he said. “I’ve got to get out there with people more. I will. I’m loosening up, and I’ll get better. I know what I’ve got to do.”

I know this. He’s got a lot to do if he’s going to ever change the mind of Miss Radio Personality.

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THE SUNDAY morning father-daughter gabfest on XTRA, which was going to feature the double-talk of Dodgers’ GM Paul DePodesta has been preempted by a Raiders’ pregame show, featuring Vic the Brick, which tells you what the radio executives think about the father-daughter gabfest.

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TODAY’S LAST word comes from the e-mail address of Stephen Semel:

“I got a call from the Dodgers to let me know my field-level season tickets would be $50 a seat rather than $25 this year. I guess that’s Frank McCourt’s way of saying, ‘Thank you, suckers.... See you at my son’s high school baseball game. The drinks there are a dollar a can.”

What a rip off. A dollar a can?

Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.