One-man Showtime
By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports
January 23, 2006

Kobe Bryant scored 81 points on Sunday – enough to rank second all time to Wilt Chamberlain's immortal 100-point game in 1962 and knock the NFL off the front burner of sports conversations – and yet people still will criticize him.

Count on it. They'll say he should have passed more (he had just two assists). They'll say he just did it for the spotlight. They'll point to his 18 misses, not his 28 makes.

They'll go on and on. Only in basketball could a guy score 81 points, make history, send every ticket holder home with a story of a lifetime, cause cell phones across America to ring with "Are you watching this?" calls, generally create amazement and wonder – and still get criticized

But watch it happen.

Kobe Bryant kicked *** Sunday, and if you can't understand that, then you need to try. This wasn't about Bryant being a ball hog or a bad teammate. Quite the contrary. The Los Angeles Lakers were getting pounded by the Toronto Raptors (down 16 at one point) until Kobe looked at his bad teammates and decided to try to win the game – which the Lakers did, 122-104.

"It just happened," Bryant said afterward. "For me, it was all about the W. I thought we were lethargic. I wanted to ride the wave and demoralize our opponent."

And people want to criticize that?

You know, even if a few of those points were unnecessary – and because the game was in doubt until late in the fourth quarter, not many of them were – who cares? Really, what is wrong with trying to make history? Don't the Raptors get paid, too?

If a baseball player hits a home run in his first three at-bats, does anyone blame him for swinging for the fences his next time up? Does anyone complain when a manager doesn't even think to take a tiring pitcher out of a no-hitter, even if it is the best move for the team to win?

When Peyton Manning is trying to set a single-season touchdown record and calls for pass plays on first-and-goal from the 1, does anyone care?

Of course not, you expect it. You demand it, even.

So why in basketball does it matter? Is it because the players are mostly black? Is it because they are prone to preening?

Is it because in basketball you have to play both offense and defense on every single possession you are in the game, and as a result your weaknesses are up for double exposure? Is it because Kobe Bryant can be rather unlikable – be it the Shaquille O'Neal thing, or the Eagle, Colo., thing, or so many other things?

Is it because there remains this "Hoosiers"-inspired purity to the game, even if coach Norman Dale would have wanted Jimmy Chitwood to keep shooting?

Maybe it is all of that above. I don't know.

I do know that back in the 1960s and '70s it wasn't like this. The gunner was celebrated. Pete Maravich, David Thompson, even Larry Bird (in the 1980s) all admittedly were selfish on some nights. It was fun. It was part of the show.

Now, no one even tries to put up big numbers. Prior to Sunday, of the top 25 highest-scoring, non-overtime games in NBA history, only one occurred after 1978 – the 1994 season finale when David Robinson scored 71 to make the case for MVP.

Why have we sucked the fun right out of the game?

Kobe Bryant scored 66.4 percent of his team's points. Wilt, in scoring 100 in his Philadelphia Warriors' 169-147 victory, managed just 59.2 percent. So maybe Kobe's performance was better, especially since he didn't enjoy Wilt's advantage of being 7-foot-1 and 275 pounds in an era of no one else being even close.

By the way, that Warriors score also should end all the other predictable talk about how nobody plays defense in the NBA anymore. Who was playing defense on Wilt's night?

NBA players play defense. They play a ton of defense. One of the great fallacies of basketball is the idea that college guys play harder defense than the pros. Apparently, the sight of a slow guard slapping the floor in a show of "intensity" has clouded reality.

If you think the Raptors wanted Bryant to hang 81 on them, you didn't see the game. They just couldn't stop him. They tried everything, every defender. (even 2, 3, & 4 AT THE SAME TIME)

Kobe was that on. He was that great. It was that much fun.

Yet there will be critics who claim that 81 points in a game isn't sports, that it isn't basketball.

But if you think sending chills down fans' spines isn't sports, then you need to lighten up – and tune in Friday to see if Kobe can hang 101 on Golden State.