Kobe Bryant🙏 Gets Oscar Nod for 'Dear Basketball' for Best🎬 Animated Short Film
Kobe Bryant's Oscar nomination, announced Tuesday, came for a film that has a deep personal meaning to him.
'Dear Basketball,' the five-minute film he worked on with artist Glen K
eane, who animated characters for Disney movies like "The Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast," and Oscar-winning composer John Williams, was among the five nominees for best animated short film.
"It was emotional when I first wrote it," Bryant told The Times about a month before the nominations were announced Tuesday. "When I sat down and thought about what I wanted to say, and then once I wrote it and stepped away from it and read it. I'd spoken to the game before. The game has done so much for me and my family. It's taught me so much and I've never actually gotten a chance to thank it."
Bryant wrote the poem in 2015 when he announced his retirement from basketball. He spent all 20 years of his career with the Lakers and was an 18-time All-Star.
After retiring from basketball, his ambition didn't disappear. It merely shifted.
"The film itself is … about a dream and trying to keep that dream as an adult," Bryant said. "And it's a dream within you. And ultimately you have to let go of the thing that you love the most for years and years and years and you have to move on. How do you come to terms with that?"
The film was available to watch on Verizon's go90, and the Lakers aired it Dec. 18, at the start of their ceremony to retire Bryant's two jerseys.
Byrant said he hoped the film stirred in people memories of their own childhoods.
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