Call him Oscar winner Kobe Bryant now. Or not

Eighteen-time NBA All-Star and five-time champion Kobe Bryant received his first Academy Award on Sunday night.

The former Lakers star accepted his Oscar for animated short during Sunday’s ceremony alongside artist Glen Keane, who gave life to his 2015 “Dear Basketball” letter, which announced the baller’s retirement from the game. Composer John Williams scored the film.

“It’s a message for all of us,” Keane said in his speech. “Whatever form your dream may take, it’s through passion and perseverance that the impossible is possible.”

Bryant, who produced and wrote the short, interrupted Keane’s speech to remind viewers that “as basketball players, we’re supposed to shut up and dribble.” He additionally thanked his wife and three daughters and kept his comments onstage brief.

The athlete’s nomination alone sparked controversy in the age of #MeToo and Time’s Up. Sexual misconduct scandals ended careers throughout the entertainment industry in the past year, so Bryant’s recognition by the academy will no doubt raise more eyebrows given that he was charged with rape in 2003.

That was the same year the academy awarded the director Oscar to convicted sex offender Roman Polanski for “The Pianist,” as the The Times’ columnist Robin Abcarian wrote this week. The charges against Bryant were later dropped, but, Abcarian wrote, that “is not an exoneration.”

Read more about “Dear Basketball” here and Abcarian’s column on Hollywood’s moral confusion here.