Veteran basketball player and 2008 and 2012 Olympic gold medalist Kobe Bryant has announced he will retire from professional basketball after the end of this season. However, ESPN reported that the chairman of USA Basketball, Jerry Colangelo, said that Bryant “remains in contention for Team USA spot for Rio 2016.”
In the form of a poem titled “Dear Basketball” on the Player’s Tribune, Bryant wrote:
My heart can take the pounding
My mind can handle the grind
But my body knows it’s time to say goodbye.
Bryant played on the U.S. national team from 2007 to 2012. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics he scored 20 points in the gold medal game to win gold over Spain. He helped the U.S. men to gold again in 2012, then said that it would be his last Olympics.
But he’s changed his tune in recent months. Bryant told the Associated Press in November that he’d like a shot at another Olympics.
“I would like to play,” Bryant said. “I think it’d be awesome. A beautiful experience.”
If he were selected and won again, Bryant, LeBron James, Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony would become the first U.S. male basketball players to win three gold Olympic medals.
In the AP interview Bryant spoke glowingly of his Olympic teammates. “It would mean the world to me to be around those guys,” he said. “I think to be able to have a chance to continue the relationship that I already have with most of those guys, talking and just kind of being around each other and understanding that this is it, it’s just us being together, that would be fun.”
He also said he believes he’d be an asset to the team, stating, “I feel like I can add value from a leadership perspective and a defensive perspective. I can still move extremely well defensively.”
Bryant’s age will likely be a concern, as his 38th birthday is just two days after the gold-medal game on August 21st, 2016.
Colangelo said that they will be looking at “all of our players” this season, and Bryant’s retirement announcement “doesn’t have any bearing” on whether he’d be selected for the 2016 Olympic team.
The 12 player team will be selected in June 2016.
"This season is all I have left to give." @kobebryant pens a letter to basketball: https://t.co/hu5CUoXHhJ pic.twitter.com/1ogKdH7buP
— The Players' Tribune (@PlayersTribune) November 29, 2015
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