Name another NBA player today who is Kobe’s match as a scorer. Allen Iverson? He is much too inconsistent from the perimeter. LeBron James? The kid might be on his way, but he’s not as capable of lengthy scoring binges when his team needs it like Kobe. Ditto for Dirk Nowitzki, Gilbert Arenas, Carmelo Anthony, Michael Redd or just about anyone else.

When Kobe decides — with advice from Phil Jackson — that he’s going to make scoring a priority because if he doesn’t the team’s total might be embarrassingly low, he fills it up with alarming ease. And there isn’t much the opponents can do about it.

Kobe is doing all this in a more difficult era, when athletes across the league are far superior overall than they were in Wilt’s day, when defenses are more sophisticated, when scouting is more meticulous, when travel is more arduous (well, there’s more of it to more cities, but of course, the comfort level is far better now than back in the day) and when the pressure is higher than ever because of television and huge salaries.

Kobe doesn’t have an ego the size of Mount Everest, like Wilt. He does have one the size of K2, which is the second-highest peak in the world. But not Everest. And he isn’t flamboyant about it like Wilt was. He doesn’t carry himself like the big bad villain, nor does he particularly enjoy deflecting the arrows of critics. He’d rather be adored and loved, whereas Wilt … well, Wilt may have felt the same way, but he hid it a lot better.

Kobe isn’t done. Whatever deluge he’s enjoying now likely will taper off, and he’ll go back to trying to fit in with whatever cockamamie team plan Jackson cooks up. But these Lakers have been decimated by injuries all season long, and if there has ever been a time when it was all right for Kobe to play the role of chucker and throw up whatever preposterous looking shot he felt like, it’s now.

Old timers will think any comparison between Kobe and Wilt is sacrilegious, of course. In Wilt’s time, he was a freak, a mighty behemoth who simply overwhelmed the opposition. They didn’t keep blocked shots back then, but if they did, it’s likely his average would be too enormous to comprehend. And coupled with his 22.9 career rebounding average, it showed just how masterful he was at both ends of the floor.

Although an excellent defensive player when he wants to be, Kobe can’t match Wilt’s defensive prowess. But as a scorer, adjusting for the respective eras, he is indeed the Wilt Chamberlain of his time. He may not have 20,000 women to attest to his prowess, but he does have a raft of befuddled NBA foes to bear witness.

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