Turns out, Kobe’s last shot was big winner

KOBE Bryant added another trophy to his collection on Sunday, taking home an Oscar for Animated Short, “Dear Basketball,” at the 90th annual Academy Awards.

It was not exactly something the Lakers legend intended to do when he first wrote it.

Bryant wrote “Dear Basketball” in The Players’ Tribune in 2015 as a poem to announce his retirement from the NBA.

“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,” the poem begins.

Bryant reflected on his life-long love of the game and coming to terms with walking away from it and moving onto the next phase of his life in the poem.

His 11-year-old daughter, Gianna, is the one who convinced Bryant to turn the poem into a film.

“Dad, you always tell us to go after our dreams, so man up,” she told him.

The five-time NBA champion eventually partnered with animator Glen Keane, who worked on several Disney animations, such as “The Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast,” to transform Bryant’s poem into a five-minute, 22 second animation. Composer John Williams and production designer Max Keane also joined the team to produce “Dear Basketball” with Bryant acting as the narrator. The film originally debuted at last year’s TriBeCa Film Festival and was screened at his jersey retirement ceremony at the Staples Center in December. Bryant, 39, said afterward that winning the Academy Award felt like validation for his post-basketball career. “I’ve always been told that as basketball players the expectation is that you play,” he said. “This is all you know. This is all you do. Don’t think about handling finances. Don’t think about going into business. Don’t think that you want to be a writer — that’s cute. I got that a lot. “This is … a form of validation for people to look and say, ‘OK, he really can do something other than dribble and shoot.” GETTY