Dear basketball: Kobe's shortfilm won the Oscar

Today Kobe Bryant will be quite happy to add to his bulletin board - next to the five NBA titles and the two MVPs - the golden Oscar statuette. Yesterday night the retired Laker was awarded with the Oscar for his contribution to the short film Dear Basketaball in the Best Animated Short Film category. The shortmovie is based on the letter written by Kobe Bryant and published by The Players Tribune in November 2015 with which Kobe announced his retirement. The Balck Mamba is also the narrative voice of the six-minutes-long movie. Kobe has now reached an extra record in his career: he is the first former NBA player to win an Oscar.

The success of the short film is based on three elements: the intensity of Kobe's letter, the draw of Glen Keane's design and the original music composed by John Williams. The most curious fact is that neither Keane nor Williams are basketball fans: Kobe said he had specially chosen those artists because they have a fresh look on basketball compared to people that has watch it for their all life and could miss details. The legendary director and drawer - Glen Keane - has worked for years at Disney, signing some of the most iconic cartoons like Tarzan, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid and The Beauty and the Beast. The stretch of Dear Basketball's raw and authentic draws is a stylistic choice that Bryant and Keane have taken together: the design wants to exhale the hardness and imperfection of the career of how Bryant lived his career, explaining it in an interview with the New York Times:

My career - like other things in life - was never perfect. There's beauty in those imperfections and the last thing I wanted to do was creating a film where all the lines were perfect and colouring was perfect. 

Even the choice of music was not random. Bryant contacted for the first time composer John Williams - who has already won the Oscar five times with the soundtracks of Steven Spielberg's films (Schindler List, Star Wars, ET, The Roof Violinist, The Shark) - three years ago, but it had nothing to do with Dear Basketball. Bryant was curious to understand the work method of a composer and Orchestra's director, how he managed to coordinate such a large number of people and produce such a perfect sound. Williams was very surprised at first but in a short time the two became friends; when it was possible to collaborate on Dear Basketball, Williams was Kobe's first choice.

The essence of the short is the letter written by Kobe Bryant two years ago. The writing is extremly powerful and very direct. It summarizes in a few words Bryant's career and his attitude towards basketball: a love so blind and deep as to become obsession, suffering and love again, it is an evolution, a journey into Kobe's passion and life. Keane said that the letter is so moving because is about the realization of a dream, of the commitment, the suffering and the joy of a journey that has been in the basket but everyone can readjust to himself.
Kobe will continue to work in the movie industry, said he is already working on new ideas but without the collaboration of Keane and Williams, already engaged in future projects. In his speech last night, Kobe said he was delighted to "prove that NBA athletes can do more than just be quiet and dribble" in reference to the insane statement by the journalist Laura Inghram on Lebron James and Kevin Durant, who had criticized Donald Trump. Kobe ended his greeting with a declaration of love to his family pronounced in Italian.

This is the complete script of the short film

Dear Basketball,

 

From the moment
I started rolling my dad’s tube socks
And shooting imaginary
Game-winning shots
In the Great Western Forum
I knew one thing was real:

I fell in love with you.

A love so deep I gave you my all —
From my mind & body
To my spirit & soul.

As a six-year-old boy
Deeply in love with you
I never saw the end of the tunnel.
I only saw myself
Running out of one.

And so I ran.
I ran up and down every court
After every loose ball for you.
You asked for my hustle
I gave you my heart
Because it came with so much more.

 

I played through the sweat and hurt
Not because challenge called me
But because YOU called me.
I did everything for YOU
Because that’s what you do
When someone makes you feel as
Alive as you’ve made me feel.

You gave a six-year-old boy his Laker dream
And I’ll always love you for it.
But I can’t love you obsessively for much longer.
This season is all I have left to give.
My heart can take the pounding
My mind can handle the grind
But my body knows it’s time to say goodbye.

And that’s OK.
I’m ready to let you go.
I want you to know now
So we both can savor every moment we have left together.
The good and the bad.
We have given each other
All that we have. 

And we both know, no matter what I do next
I’ll always be that kid
With the rolled up socks
Garbage can in the corner
:05 seconds on the clock
Ball in my hands.
5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1

Love you always,
Kobe