Kobe is a ball-hog

Yah that's right, you heard me.

Last night Kobe Bryant set a record for most points scored by an opponent in Madison Square Garden (that's the current MSG, not the old MSG, get it straight) when the Lakers beat the Knicks 126-117.

Kobe dropped a cool 61 on the Knickerbockers, passing Michael Jordan's old record of 55, set in March of 1995.
Bryant now has five career games of 60+ points, second all-time only to Wilt Chamberlain who Kobe could catch if played like 20 more years. Wilt has 32 of 'em.

Now, though Bryant's career high is 81, a total which is the second all-time highest scoring performance to Wilt's 100 and a full 20 more than last night, Kobe really should learn to pass the ball...

His 61 points came in only 37 minutes!!
Listen people, I'm all about being selfish, but this is ridiculous. Kobe was 20 for 20 at the free-throw line and 19 of 31 from the field. He took 31 shots! The next highest number of shots taken by any other player on either team last night was 17. He made more shots than anyone else even attempted. In fact, this year Kobe is second in the NBA in field goals attempted per game at just over 20. He trails just Dwayne Wade in that category who happens to, ya know, lead the NBA in points per game.

Ok Kobe, we get it. You're good. You may even be 21.262 million dollars-a-year good. But do you really need to show it off to us mere mortals in such a brazen and brash way?

For god's sake, did you even play defense? You went the entire game with ZERO rebounds and ZERO steals! You would think you'd get at least one of either just by fluke.

You also only had 3 assists. Now, I didn't watch the game, but I saw the highlights. The Knicks were definitely double teaming number 8 and sometimes even triple teaming! You don't think instead of taking one of those 31 shots you might find the open guy in the post for a better look...? No...? Whatever

David Lee put it best after the game:
"He wouldn't speak to anyone on the court. He was very quiet tonight. By the time he hit his first two 3's, you could see what he was attempting to do in the game," Lee said."It was very obvious to all of us by the middle of the first quarter that he wasn't in a distributing type of mode or in a getting 10 rebounds type of mode, that he was going to try to score the basketball tonight."

Duh...

Kobe, there's a reason you've alienated so many teammates and still to this day carry a reputation as a spectacularly talented player who can do things with a ball no other man can, but just isn't a natural leader. While a stat line of 61-3-0 is nice, 50-8-6 would've looked much better.