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 Keane, 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.