{image1} A four million dollar diamond ring?

This is going to get Kobe Bryant out of the doghouse with his wife Vanessa? Are you kidding? Has Kobe ever heard the phrase "throwing good money after bad?"

Throwing a rock the size of a Titleist on your jilted wife's finger may make you feel pretty studly with the fellas on the golf course. But how does that little tchotchke play when she's out drinking Merlo with the girls?

"Oh, Vanessa, that rock is something else, honey. Was that for the girl your husband slept with in Colorado, or is it a make-up for all the other women you have no idea about?"

Where exactly (even if you are the wife of a world renowned athlete) do you wear such an item?

And don't say "conjugal visits."

Now that he's given her the bling, don't expect half of it back when the marriage ends up DOA as any sane man in America knows it will.

Oh yeah, that's right. Kobe said he loves his wife "with all his heart." A pretty nice thing to read on a Valentine's card, another thing entirely when you are denying rape charges to the entire free world. Kinda loses its Hallmark appeal when two $500 an hour attorneys are sitting on the dais with you, don't you think?

Kobe also said that night that his wife is "the strongest person I know." That includes himself of course, a man not strong enough to keep it zippered up for a couple of days while she and the baby were back home alone.

Let's be real. Its Vanessa's world, Kobe is just trying to minimize the zeroes on that settlement train that is barreling down the tracks.

Which brings me to apologize to two people that I have criticized loudly over the last year or so. The first is hyper-possessive Jackie Christie of the Sacramento Kings. Her exploits to shield hubby Doug from the Adam and Eve temptations of the NBA is now legendary.

She has been known to follow Christie in her own car while he rides to the arena on the team charter bus while calling him on his cell phone. She has run off PR staffers for the Kings because they happened to be women, and (gasp) actually talked to her husband in the offices. He signals her every 17 seconds or so on the court with various hand gestures and arm raises.

Last pre-season, when the Christie and Laker forward Rick Fox got into a back-stage scuffle, who was right there swinging her purse at the enemy combatants? None other than the queen of paranoia herself.

We're not talking whipped here, we're talking flogged!

But then again, I gotta say I am starting to smell what Jackie Christis is cooking. If Kobe Bryant has little ladies "on the side" in various NBA cities, then no man is safe. Yeah, Doug Christie is a pretty homely guy (not that I have a list, or anything, you know) but even he could have his pick of a litter of swilling and supplicant NBA groupies.

My list of guys in the NBA not cheating on their wives, goes something like this.

1.         John Stockton

2.         David Robinson

3.         AC Green

4.         Pistol Pete Maravich

As you know, the first three are all retired, and the last one is quite dead. So I feel pretty confident about them.

The rest of the league I am pretty skeptical on. The free NBA wool at every turn is the "Sum of All Fears" for a wife who can't stand the thought of sharing her man. I'm going to assume the worst now on everybody else, and just be pleasantly surprised if after a 15 year career a guy hangs it up with a spotless extra-marital record.

The other person I owe an apology to is one Joe Jellybean Bryant. When it came out this season that Papa Bear Bryant hadn't yet seen his granfhild, and that there was a falling out with him and his son over the woman he married, I was quick to blast what many perceived as a racial issue.

Kobe is black, Vanessa is Latino. That didn't sit well with everybody.

But more critical was Jellybean's dismay that Kobe had simply gotten married to ANYONE at the tender age of 21. Too much life to be lived, too many people to meet. Too many things to find out about yourself and too much growing to do.

Jellybean was right on this one. Legal age for marriage in this country ought to be 30. Nobody has any idea what they are really looking for in life before then if you ask me.

He also wasn't real happy that Kobe is rumored to have brushed aside a pre-nup because he was "in love." Ouch. California is bad enough even WITH a piece of paper, but wait until he sees what "half" looks like without one.

Oh yeah, what is my take is on the events of the night of June 30, 2003 at the Cordillera Resort? Without hearing any of the evidence, it goes something like this. Kobe and accuser are "getting their missionary on" so to speak without any problems. Kobe decides he wants to go out onto the back porch for a bit, accuser refuses. Struggle ensues, lab results to show that screen door on said back porch is a little banged up.

In other words, it's not going to be pretty for a guy like Kobe, whose reputation has already been dealt a withering body blow. Even though the pundits say that a "he-said, she-said" case is often difficult to prove in a court of law, just hearing the "she-said" part of that night's events will be lurid enough. No matter how Kobe and his lawyers refute it, and present their side of the story, you won't be able to make a Sprite commercial out of this one.

The good news for Kobe and the Lakers however, is that unless Mark "Don't Call me Dilbert" Hurlburt is sitting on a bombshell piece of indisputable physical evidence, the chances Kobe goes down are about as slim as Shaq reporting to camp at his media guide weight of 320.

But then again, you never know, so I guess Kobe should keep a few more $4 million rings laying around in his glove compartment just in case. Not that it will score him any any significant brownie points with the missus, it'll just allow him to write a smaller check later.