This is interesting because I’ve been wondering about this for a long time myself.

Jeff Van Gundy offered a modest proposal and everyone laughed. Van Gundy was not joking.

Weeks before accusations could begin that teams were tanking games to improve their chances of landing either of the season’s celebrated college prodigies, Greg Oden and Kevin Durant, Van Gundy offered a solution. Make the entire first round a lottery. One through 30. Put every name in a hat and let luck determine the draft order.

Right now, only the really crappy teams get solid shots at improving through the draft, so if you’re a team with decent management that manages to keep you in the middle, or moving up, then you’re never really going to get anyone of merit without getting lucky. By the same token, really good players who end up with perennially bad teams are just plain stuck until their rookie contracts run out.

I understand the notion of spreading the wealth and trying to level the laying field, but I think the teams who don’t dog it every season need to get a shot in the draft as well.

Oh well, Kobe’s scoring streak ends at four games, though the Lakers winning streak . Good enough for me, though Marc Stein at ESPN figured it would go at least six.

So you heard it hear first. Kobe is going to take his streak of 50-point games all the way to next Friday’s home game with Houston — one short of tying Wilt Chamberlain’s record of seven consecutive 50-pointers — when the slow-it-down Houston Rockets will finally hold No. 24 under a half-century.

The LA Times wrote after the fame against Golden State:

Kobe Bryant’s pursuit of Wilt Chamberlain was halted after he scored 43 points, but the Lakers secured their season-high fifth consecutive victory by beating the Golden State Warriors, 115-113, Sunday at Staples Center.

That’s four games in a row where he’s gone over 50 and he’s three more from tying Wilt’s record of seven consecutive 50+ games in 1961-62. As it stands, he and Chamberlin are the only people to do it four times. Fingers crossed. Oh yeah, and the Lakers beat the Hornets 111-105.

So, I’m reading that Kobe’s going off again. I’m glad to hear it, because I’ve been a Laker fan for about 25 years and it’s killed me this season to see them drop seven straight games and 11 of 14 before Kobe went off against Portland for 63.

What’s made me even happier is that it seems that Phil Jackson has green-lit this scoring offensive, so not only is Kobe (rightfully) being selfish, but he’s been allowed to be. If you put things in perspective for a second, his me-first play is a team-centric approach, because if the Lakers kept dropping games, then the team would go into the playoffs on the back foot, or worse still, miss them altogether. He’s doing this for the team.

With Lamar and Luke back, maybe this’ll slow down some, but I think they’ll take a bit to get back on track, and anyway, I don’t really think those two can pick up the slack created by Kobe scoring only, say, 35 points.

To top it off, he’s now the league’s leading scorer. If there’s no MVP on the table, at least he’ll get something to show for his prowess, because we’re sure as hell not going to get past the first round of the playoffs.