Michael Ventre

Kobe Bryant is the Wilt Chamberlain of the 21^st century.

OK, so maybe he hasn’t slept with 20,000 women. And he isn’t 7-foot-1, doesn’t have a nickname like “The Big Dipper,” never played for the Harlem Globetrotters and, most significantly, hasn’t scored 100 points in a game — yet.

But Kobe has scored 81 points in a game. And recently he’s been on a rampage during which he has scored 50 or more points in four straight contests, including one 65-point effort.

Since Michael Jordan entered the NBA in 1984, the sports world has been hit with a bucket brigade of players hell bent on mimicking Jordan’s individual glory. Although Mike will go down in history as a winner, having absconded with six rings as the leader of the Chicago Bulls, he did help usher in an era in which highlights on ESPN were more appealing to young players than victories, and interview subjects referred to themselves regularly in the third person.

Kobe arrived in this wave, but he won three rings as a Laker during the Shaq years by conforming to the team concept, even though it ran contrary to his nature.

Now, however, Kobe gets a pass because the rest of his team reeks. The surprise isn’t that he’s scoring over 50 so often, the surprise is that he hasn’t scored 100 yet.

That might come any day now.

I didn’t think so before. And I didn’t believe it would be a healthy development for a Lakers team that is aspiring to be slightly better than last season, in which it almost upset the Phoenix Suns in the first round of the playoffs. I have always believed that Kobe needed to shoot less and involve his team more.

This is different.

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You can’t put restraints on the Wilt Chamberlain of the 21^st century. It wouldn’t be right. Not now, anyway.

Kobe is today’s Wilt because he can score at will. The league widened the lane to react to Wilt’s dominance; Kobe has brought about no such drastic rule changes.

And Kobe is only 6-6, which means he has to go around defenders whereas Wilt could go over most of them. Wilt was a center, so he feasted on higher-percentage shots closer to the basket. Kobe is a guard, so he has to either beat people off the dribble, which he is phenomenal at, or he has to drill from outside, another skill for which he is renowned.

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But Kobe is unlike any other scorer in the NBA today. Wilt boasted his own brand of dominance, involving a particular set of skills possessed by a big man. Kobe has a larger bag of tricks. He invents moves in mid-air. He is adept at drawing fouls and manipulating defenders. As far as his offensive game, he doesn’t really have a flaw.

Most importantly, though, he has more confidence than any single player in the NBA today. That was what Wilt was known for, and that’s why he ruled. Kobe’s confidence is at least Wilt’s equal and probably greater given his broader range of skills.