Kobe Bryant has announced that this will be his last NBA season.
Kobe Bryant has announced that this will be his last NBA season. plavevski/Shutterstock

As the only Stranger editorial staffer who cares about professional basketball (a burden that grows heavier and more painful each year that Seattle somehow continues to exist without the team we were robbed of*), it is my duty to inform you that over the weekend legendary LA Laker Kobe Bean Bryant announced that he is retiring after the 2015-2016 season.

The announcement, which Bryant made in the Player's Tribune, doesn't come as a total surprise. Bryant's body has broken down over the last few years (his last three seasons have ended early because of various injuries) and he's not the player he used to be. Last Tuesday, he shot an embarrassing 1-for-14 against the currently undefeated NBA champions the Golden State Warriors. What is surprising, though, is that Bryant announced his retirement in the form of a poem. It's titled "Dear Basketball," and its opening image is of tube socks.

An excerpt:

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.
I want you to know now
So we both can savor every moment we have left together.
The good and the bad.
We have given each other
All that we have.

I'll just say this: Kobe Bryant is one of the greatest basketball players of all time. He is not a poet. And that's okay.

*In tweeting about Kevin Durant's reaction to Bryant's retirement, ESPN's SportsCenter managed to find a way to mock Sonics fans by using this photo of Durant, who was drafted by Seattle and played his rookie season here, in a Sonics uniform. Dude has been in the league for eight years. There's no other photo of him and Kobe together?