Oscar nod for Bryant also honors two others

When former Los Angeles Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant decided to make a film based on “Dear Basketball,” his farewell poem to the sport he loved, he chose two collaborators who knew nothing about the game.

Former Disney artist Glen Keane had animated, among other films, “Aladdin,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Tarzan,” and John Williams is an Oscar-winning composer.

His choices paid off: The trio’s film won the Annie Award, the animation industry’s most prestigious prize, for best short film of 2017; it is also considered a likely favorite for the Academy Award for animated short at the 90th Academy Awards on Sunday.

“Even though, in his own words, I ‘couldn’t have picked a worse animator for basketball,’ I felt Glen and I shared an emotional connection that enabled him relate to the piece at a deeper level,” Bryant, who retired in 2016, said by phone recently. “He was at a time in his career that was parallel to my own — leaving Disney after so many years and starting something new.”

Seeing himself animated, Bryant said, was surreal.

“I once dreamed of having a signature Nike shoe, but I never thought I’d be animated by Glen Keane — that pretty much tops everything!”

Keane said the work “was the most difficult thing I’ve ever animated,” adding: “I was trying to draw a moving sculpture in space that had to look exactly like Kobe. I could draw Beast any way I wanted: Nobody knows what Beast really looks like. Everybody