Oscars 2018: Kobe Bryant Just Won an Academy Award and Twitter Can’t Believe It

Five-time NBA Champion and former Los Angeles Laker Kobe Bryant won an Oscar at Sunday’s 90th Annual Academy Awards for Best Documentary short for his film Dear Basketball.

The animated film was written by Bryant and directed by Glen Keane. The story centers around a letter Kobe Bryant wrote in The Players’ Tribune in November 2015, where he announced his retirement from basketball.

Bryant’s basketball career stretched from 1996-2016, where he only played with the Lakers. He won five NBA Championships, two NBA Finals MVP awards, one MVP award, 18 All-Star honors and two Olympic gold medals. He finished with 33,643 career points and had his No. 8 and No. 24 jerseys retired by the team.

Given how rare it is for an athlete of Bryant’s magnitude to also win one of the most coveted prizes in entertainment, social media couldn’t help but laugh at the situation.

“People who have less Academy Awards than Kobe Bryant: Glenn Close, Sigourney Weaver, Harrison Ford, Johnny Depp, Edward Norton and Michael Jordan,” Casey Jost wrote.

“Congratulations to my good friend [Kobe Bryant] for winning the Oscar for best animated short film. Well deserved!” fellow Lakers legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson wrote.

“Kobe Bryant has the same amount of oscars as Leonardo DiCaprio,” a Twitter user wrote.

“Not saying he doesn’t deserve tonight’s win, but Kobe Bryant has the same number of Oscars as Stanley Kubrick,” another wrote.

“Kobe Bryant has as many Oscars as Leonardo DiCaprio. That sentence is both incredibly awesome and incredibly disappointing,” Twitter user Chris Fedor joked.