Keith Duggan/Sideline Cut: Sooner or later, the depressing details of the Kobe Bryant show trial are going to surface here. The story that has gripped tabloid and broadsheet America - that of an Afro-American sports star generally labelled as the future of the NBA facing charges of sexual assault on a teenage girl - has already begun its inevitable descent into the subterranean jurisdiction of trial by television.

Last week, Bryant, a handsome and articulate 24-year-old, appeared with his wife, Vanessa, and shedding tears, admitted that while he was an adulterer he was not guilty of the charges of sexual assault being pressed on him by a prosecution team in Colorado. Bryant's strong family values - he showed up at the Staples Centre to play with his team, the LA Lakers, wearing his newborn daughter's hospital bracelet last January - was just one of the reasons he was being groomed as the new king of the NBA.

Along with celebrated coaching guru Phil Jackson and the seven-foot behemoth Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe was the improvisational genius of an LA Laker dynasty. The trinity had already taken three championship rings and, with the league in stasis, more were certain to follow.

Already the sports commentators had begun to debate whether Bryant's brilliance would in time eclipse the afterglow of the unprecedented Michael Jordan era. Sinewy and lithe and blessed with preternatural quickness, Bryant at his best is certainly as transfixing a player as Jordan. At 24, his range of gifts is more complete but whether he possesses the savage hunger and inescapable need for basketball that set Jordan apart is debatable. And at this stage, it may be academic.

The trial of Kobe Bryant has already been painted as a trial of the NBA. The details carry echoes of the Mike Tyson/Desiree Washington case. In essence, it involves an incredibly famous African-American athlete, a young girl and a disputed incident in a hotel room.

Bryant was in Edward, Colorado, on June 30th last to receive treatment for a knee injury. After the charges broke, he submitted to a DNA test and then embarked on his televised offensive by openly conceding his sorrow as an adulterer and emphasising his innocence of charges that if proven carry lengthy prison time as punishment.

But Bryant and Tyson could not be more different. Aloof, cool and composed, Bryant has long been presented as the counter argument whenever the charge arose that the culture of the NBA was morally bankrupt - that it passed unspeakable material riches onto athletes with no sense of personal responsibility and with total disregard for the cherished American principle of family.

David Stern is the commissioner of the NBA and is largely responsible for transforming the association into the global product it has become today.

Going to an NBA game is a strange experience; the spectators are predominantly white, as are the television people who provide coverage, and the aggressive merchandising is aimed at the white middle classes who can afford the outrageously priced vests worn by stars like Kobe. But the actual game is dominated by African-American players.

Since Boston's Larry Bird retired, there has been no white superstar, and with John Stockton of the Utah Jazz also leaving the game, there is no white player left in the league that would be deemed great.

For the last year, basketball was getting all hot under the collar about the arrival of LeBron James, a schoolboy sensation from Ohio who recently was the number one choice in the NBA draft pick and is now worth a cool $100 million. Again, he is an African-American kid and the relative deprivation of his background has been exhaustively researched by the media.

Despite the universal aping of Afro-American street culture by white kids, from dress to music, the NBA does its best to shave the racial imbalance by encouraging the import of European players. But the relative disappearance of home-grown white stars is a concern in the context of ratings. This year's NBA finals between the San Antonio Spurs and the New Jersey Nets were "white-ified" only by the fleeting appearances of Steve Kerr, a 37-year-old sharpshooter in the twilight of his career.

It was a terrible series and it gave credence to those who argue that the NBA is now dominated by Afro-American athletes with little interest in the fundamentals of outside shooting and passing. Uncomfortably close to racism to begin with, that theory is made even more so when words like "cerebral" and "disciplined" are often applied by commentators to the NBA's white players.

The not infrequent indiscretions of the NBA's superstars are gleefully pored over by American media outlets. Recreational drug misdemeanours, gambling, spousal abuse and evasion of paternity responsibilities are among the most common, and most of the reported charges involve Afro-American athletes.

The NBA has never exactly had a saintly reputation. In the '70s, it was a rough house, with half-empty auditoriums and regular fist fights, all of which have been distilled down to one moment in 1977 when a 6ft 8ins Lakers player, Kermit Washington (a black kid from the ghettos), blind punched Houston's Rudy Tomjanovich (white and college educated) and almost killed him.

In the '80s, the Bird and Magic Johnston rivalry, a classic match-up of Bird's classically white interpretation of the game and Magic's freewheeling jazz version, reinvented the NBA. In the next decade, the NBA went global through Jordan.

The last few years have been steady but hardly breathtaking. This is why Kobe Bryant could not have fallen at a worse time. Whether his version of events is true and he is the victim of gold-digging or he is indeed guilty of ruining the life of a young girl will be played out in a horribly public way that will permanently affect both people.

One of Bryant's legal people defended Jon and Patsy Bennet in the trial for the murder of their daughter Jon Bennet, one of the most lurid and sickening crossovers between tabloid entertainment and justice to emerge from America. The Bryant trial is heading down a similar road.

Given that the Afro-American community has always struggled to get a fair rap from a predominantly white media, Bryant has done his community no favours. With the notion of the black-stud-jock already hammered home at every available opportunity, his trial will do much to provide material for those inclined to tar all with the same brush.

The one thing the NBA has going for it is that the NFL has become so truly warped in the past few years that the basketball league still looks like the meeting of a choir group. But to put it bluntly, the NFL is not as dependent on Afro-Americans to win ratings. The NFL is less about faces.

Kobe Bryant was the chosen face of the NBA, one acceptable to both black and white communities. Now that he is in the dock, it is hard to see who could be the new saviour of the NBA.

More importantly, it is hard to see who would believe it. After more than a decade of convincing people that the NBA had "cleaned up its act", David Stern now has no choice but to sit and await the jury.