Kobe Bryant’s Inspirational Message #dontretirekid

Aside from the ‘cream of the crop’, many kids are starting to quit hyper-competitive youth sports, due to a number of factors, which leading Think Tanks, like the Aspen Institute, with the support of role models like Kobe Bryant, expose well in their initiative Project Play.

What I love about this video is how Kobe talks about the need for kids to be free to be creative and use whatever tools and environment they have – be it a basement (and he specifically references his basement growing up in Philly!) or wherever – to play. This is actually just one video in a series that he did for this campaign – they’re all very powerful messages (available on Youtube under the hash tag #dontretirekid), but this one struck me the most, for the reasons mentioned.

Basement Sports is an answer – certainly not the only option – to that need for unstructured play, which is a gap in the lives of most American (and worldwide) children today.