Honor Kobe Bryant By Watching His Oscar-Winning Short, Dear Basketball, Which Is Now Streaming


Kobe Bryant’s Academy Award-winning animated short, Dear Basketball, is now available to stream in honor of the late NBA legend’s death on Sunday. It’s essentially the first time the short is easily viewable since it took home the Oscar in 2018.

Dear Basketball is named after Bryant’s 2015 letter in The Players’ Tribune announcing his retirement, and the short consists of Bryant himself narrating the letter. As he talks about his early childhood devotion to basketball and the reasons why he knows it’s time for him to step away from the court, vivid hand-drawn animation shows two Bryants, young and old, playing the game they love.

The short, a production by Kobe Bryant’s multimedia company Granity Studio, was directed and animated by famed Disney legend Glen Keane. The iconic John Williams of Star Wars fame provided the score. After it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, Dear Basketball was pretty hard to find, as there was no legitimate way to stream it. Prior to this, would-be viewers could only track down a trailer for the 5-minute short. Granity Studios changed that yesterday, putting the full short on Vimeo and on the website dearbasketball.com.

“It’s a message for all of us,” Keane said during his Oscars acceptance speech as Bryant stood alongside him, trophy in hand. “It’s through passion and perseverance that the impossible is possible.” During his acceptance speech, Bryant thanked the people who helped make and support the film before thanking his wife and daughters, including Gianna.

Bryant, 41, died alongside eight others on Sunday when his helicopter crashed during foggy conditions in Los Angeles. The news broke shortly before the Grammy Awards, and he was honored many times during the ceremony. It seems highly likely that the Oscar-winner will also be honored during the Academy Awards ceremony on February 9.


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