Shadows over a new season

As the National Basketball Association tipped off its 58th season this week, many around the league worried aloud about fans watching Court TV - the kind that had nothing to do with hoops. They weren't joking. With the possible exception of rookie phenom LeBron James, the forthcoming trial of Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant has eclipsed all else in professional basketball in recent months.

League executives and marketing experts, as well as players past and present, offer compelling evidence of the NBA's strengths. Still, even the most bullish observers acknowledge painful days and months ahead as Mr. Bryant's celebrity-circus trial exhumes the sordid details of the NBA star's sexual liaison at a Colorado resort last summer.

At minimum, Bryant, a warm, grinning pitchman for Sprite, Nike, and other corporate brands during the Lakers' recent championship runs, is an admitted adulterer. At worst, he is a rapist. Even the best-case scenario for Bryant, an acquittal, leaves him tainted in the eyes of marketers and fans.

The case "will continue to be a huge story not only in the NBA, but in the world of sports," says Dean Bonham, a former Denver Nuggets executive who now serves as chief executive at The Bonham Group, a sports marketing firm. "It's going to go to trial and it's going to be long, drawn out, graphic, and negative."

The NBA finds itself in a curious paradox: Even as some of its players slide into embarrassing judicial tangles, the league's outlook overall appears healthy.

Merchandise sales are expected to exceed $3 billion this year, a 20 percent gain and a sign that the league's pop-culture cachet remains healthy. Chinese import Yao Ming and a fleet of European stars also give the NBA global recognition unmatched by the NFL, NHL, or Major League Baseball.

"The fact that a 12-year-old kid in Spain will watch the Memphis Grizzlies because of [Spanish player] Pau Gasol is amazing," says Tom O'Grady, chief creative officer at Game Plan Branding Group. "That's something the NBA didn't have in the past."

Attendance last season for the 29 franchises totaled 20 million, a 0.5 percent decline from the previous year. Not bad in light of a sluggish economy and the Iraq war. Even so, attendance figures reveal a slow, steady decline since the late-1990s.

David Stern, the oft-lauded NBA commissioner, delivered a typically cheery portrait of the league during a teleconference with reporters this month. The Bryant case, he says, will ebb and flow, but will not supersede the floor shows put on by the 29 NBA teams during the coming months.

"I think that the people will focus on basketball," Mr. Stern said. "I think that there will be periodic media disruptions based on various court dates."

It's true that even beyond Bryant, the league suffers from image problems related to other player arrests and controversies.

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