Dear Mr. Kobe Bryant,

I remember the first time I ever knew who you were. My mother was a die-hard Lakers fan. She watched you at the 1997 Slam Dunk Contest, and she turned to me and said, "This Kobe guy is going to be really good." That was your rookie season. You didn't even play that much that year -- you played 15 minutes a game and averaged about 7 points per game -- but she watched that dunk contest and she knew. And I went over to my Fisher-Price hoop and copied you. Granted, my 360-slam was just me pirouetting on my feet and throwing it through my 4-foot rim; but still, it was an accomplishment for me at that point. And that was the coolest thing about you: You allowed me and future basketball-playing kids everywhere to dream.

You were never my favorite player. Allen Iverson was my favorite player, and I still haven't forgiven you for denying him the championship I think he so desperately deserved in 2001. But try as I might, I could never fully despise you -- because as much as I wanted it to be otherwise, you commanded the respect of your fans, of players and of anybody who was even remotely associated with the game of basketball. You started out as a high school phenom, went on to be a 20-point-per-game scorer, a 30-point-per-game scorer, a thirty-five-point-per-game scorer. You scored 81 points in a single game, like some sort of weird video game reality. You were compared to a lot of contemporary greats -- Tracy McGrady, Allen Iverson, Dwyane Wade, Vince Carter -- and you never batted an eyelash at those comparisons.

I remember when I got NBA 2K9 for Christmas. I was 13-years-old. Who did I play as the second the game had loaded? Kobe god-damn Bryant, because you were the baddest man on the planet, a tongue-wagging, jersey-biting basketball psychopath obsessed with obliterating and humbling any opponent that stood before you.

At first, you wanted to be Michael Jordan so badly, for so long.

And you know what, you actually got pretty close. Eerily so. You got caught up in the same cycle so many of us fans and basketball lovers do: of comparing great players, lumping categories together, and never truly appreciating the singular talent of the athletes before us. But you learned, like us, that you were not Michael Jordan -- you were Kobe Bryant. And who is Kobe Bryant? A five-time champion, MVP, Finals MVP, All-Star MVP, 17-time All-Star, Scoring champion, Olympian. Hey, you even surpassed Michael Jordan on the all-time scoring list. Along the way, they said you couldn't do it without Shaq. They said you shot too much. They said you drove away free agents with your lofty standards. I'm pretty sure you sent Smush Parker into a deep depression and the more the pressure mounted, the more your response became singular: "I'm here to win championships." And you did, time and time again -- ripping out the hearts of entire franchises along the way.

You announced that you were retiring the other day and you're having a bad season; man, you look old! And that's all that anyone seems to want to talk about, as though we've somehow forgotten the man who had the obsessive work ethic, re-created the jab step, and was the most feared man in basketball for an entire generation. You weren't a Jordan-esque hero. You were something else entirely, a manic basketball addict obsessed with victory. You were Darth Vader, Auric Goldfinger, and Magneto rolled into one unstoppable jump-shooting force and I'll never forget you. Thank you, Mr. Kobe Bryant, for being one of the greatest players to ever grace the court, for making the whole world dream about being as good as you -- and never giving a s*** what anybody had to say the whole damn way.