It's a love letter written, narrated and produced by Kobe Bryant to the sport he has graced for some years now. He has gotten Glen Keane to direct it, which means to animate it, and Mr. Keane has chosen to animate it as a pencil test. It's a brilliant idea.
For those unfamiliar with the term, a pencil test is usually an intermediate stage in hand-drawn animation: before the inkers and colorists and backgrounders get their hands on the cartoon, the animator (that is to say, the senior animator assigned to direct a portion of a movie) draws several of the shots within a sequence and arranges them as a flip book to test out the motion; should that work, it goes to his assistants to do the interior sequences, to smooth out the details, to ink them in, and so forth. Keane and his assistant have left this at the flip book stage, rendering it an impressionist work, a contemplation of motion and grace, and it works wonderfully. Then they got John Williams to do the score. It's a love letter and what is there not to love?
For those unfamiliar with the term, a pencil test is usually an intermediate stage in hand-drawn animation: before the inkers and colorists and backgrounders get their hands on the cartoon, the animator (that is to say, the senior animator assigned to direct a portion of a movie) draws several of the shots within a sequence and arranges them as a flip book to test out the motion; should that work, it goes to his assistants to do the interior sequences, to smooth out the details, to ink them in, and so forth. Keane and his assistant have left this at the flip book stage, rendering it an impressionist work, a contemplation of motion and grace, and it works wonderfully. Then they got John Williams to do the score. It's a love letter and what is there not to love?