Kobe Bryant To Retire After This Season

Kobe Bryant, who has helped the Lakers win five NBA championships over a 20-year career spent entirely in Los Angeles, announced Sunday on The Players’ Tribune website that he will retire after this 2015-2016 NBA season, writing that “this season is all I have left to give.”

In a first-person story titled “Dear Basketball,” the 37-year-old wrote in the form of a poem that the sport “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,” Bryant wrote. “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.”

“My body knows it’s time to say goodbye,” Bryant wrote in a poem made to the public. The inevitable is etched within the record now. He is a forever talent in the NBA, a forever achiever of five championships and an MVP. Bryant has been a tortured genius, a talent born of relentless repetition and peerless passion. Few ever cared so deeply for a craft, ever committed such deep devotion.

For months, Bryant suspected this would be his final season. Two things that could’ve inspired his return for a 21st season a strong comeback performance and a rapidly developing supporting cast never materialized this season. The Lakers are a gutted shell, wrapped within an icon sapped of his powers. The result is painful to watch.

Kobe Bryant addresses the media to explain how he came to the decision to retire at the conclusion of the 2015-16 NBA season.

But Bryant said he’s comfortable with his decision to leave the game.
“I’ve learned that you’ve got to roll with things,” he said. “You can’t resist things. You’ve got to self-assess, and I’m pretty brutal about self-assessment and then trying to get better and doing all you can to get better and then you roll with whatever happens, continually pursuing improvement. I’m fine with that.

“I can look in the mirror, man. I have tried and tried and tried and worked extremely hard since I was a young kid. That’s why I feel extremely confident that I left no stone unturned.”