I grew up hating you. I was taught to despise you for some reason or another.

Kobe doesn’t pass; he’s not a team player.

Kobe never works the ball around and settles for contested shots.

For the rest of the league, these are great reasons to hate you. If you were a Lakers fan, these were the reasons to love you.

You see though, basketball is a simple sport of putting the ball in the basket, and you could do that very well, Mr. Bryant. Your unbelievable ability to take contested shots — and make them.

Your ability to take over a game and impose your will on the other teams defense, these are abilities that made you great. I am not lying when I say: Kobe Bryant was truly fun to watch.

Our teams were just not on your level. They couldn’t shoot with you. They couldn’t defend you. Try as they might, they simply couldn’t stop your signature moves.

Your athletic takes to the basket. Your explosive dunks. Your heavily contested pull up jumps shot. Your clutch threes, your deep threes, your game winning threes. Your pump-fake, pump-fake, fade away jump shot. And of course your jab-step, then turn-around jump shot on the block. These are your shots.

These are my memories.

Thank you for filling my childhood with highlights, game winners and dunks. Where my father grew up with Larry Bird and Michael Jordan, I grew up watching you. I grew up learning how to play the game of basketball from you.

You are my generation’s basketball player, and I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t going to miss you. For today we have seen all that the Black Mamba will give us. We have every highlight; a new one isn’t going to be made.

So goodbye, Mamba; thanks for all of those memories. No, you weren’t my favorite basketball player. I still despised you, yet I understand that your greatness is rare.

It was a pleasure, a learning experience and a joy to watch one man’s mission to make everyone hate him on the court.