Basking in the afterglow of Kobe Bryant's 81-point game, I wrote a piece on how Kobe has stretched the boundaries of basketball possibility. Within that article I speculated that the Mamba had a fairly decent shot at pushing his scoring average to historic levels by the end of the season. His current average (35.7) would be good for seventh best all-time, but Kobe actually has a shot to surpass Michael Jordan's best season (37.1), the only measuring stick that really matters. (Wilt Chamberlain topped that mark four times, including a ridiculous 50.4 in '61-'62, but Wilt's numbers are a bit too stratospheric to merit discussion here.)
Anyway, since the Lakers have been doing an excellent job of pissing me off lately, I thought I'd focus a bit on something that doesn't really matter -- Kobe's pursuit of Jordan. So in the upper right-hand corner of this site, I'll be posting a "Kobe Meter" which will track his current average and what he'll have to average the rest of the way to catch MJ. It should be fun. (For a great resource on all things connected with single-season scoring in the NBA, check this link. Also, check out Forum Blue & Gold for an interesting piece on the recent double- and triple-teams Kobe's been seeing, something that might limit his chances in this race.)
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