Yielding to temptation not unusual in NBA

Kobe Bryant has invited the flaccid judgment that he is all too human after hooking up with a 19-year-old woman not his wife.

The high number of commentators expressing shock is more shocking than the revelation.

Their standard giveaway line is: This is not the Kobe we know.

The superficial assumption comes from a fan-magazine familiarity with the principal.

In fact, we don’t really know Kobe, as if there is something to know or can be known from the nothingness of the sit-down interview format.

He probably is just another 24-year-old guy who, on most levels, is trying to figure it all out, which is neither good nor bad, just not anything of great depth.

How many times does the point have to be made that exceptional physical gifts do not necessarily translate into exceptional decision-making skills?

Bryant risked at least half his considerable estate with this brief affair, assuming he and his wife do not have an “understanding.”

That is the best you can say for Bryant at this point. The worst remains to be determined.

This is not going to go away from Bryant’s portfolio, not ever, not unless it can be shown that the woman is some kind of nut case. Even then, who knows?

The nut-case avenue beckons Bryant’s legal team, which is straight out of the Bill Clinton playbook.

By the time Bryant’s investigators pick through the woman’s background, every bad-hair day she ever has had will be subject to interpretation.

The quality of the woman’s mental health already is being put into public play, courtesy of a report in the Orange County (Calif.) Register, which reveals the woman took an overdose of pills two months ago following a break-up with a boyfriend and the death of a friend in a roadway accident.

This is the follow-up attack to the first, if the first really was an attack.

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