Coming into the 2014-15 NBA Season, Kobe Bryant has 31,700 points. Michael Jordan finished his career with 32,292 points, the third-most all-time, trailing only Karl Malone (36,928) and the all-time NBA leader, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (38,387). So Kobe trails MJ by 592 points heading into the year, and the Lakers play in Chicago on Christmas Day…
As first mentioned on Mike & Mike in the Morning, and relayed to us by username: zemulon in reddit’s excellent R/NBA community, comes the news Kobe might be in Chicago for a landmark milestone involving Michael Jordan.
If Kobe averages 21 PPG through the first two months of the season leading up to the Christmas Day game, he’ll have 588 points by the time the Lakers travel to Chicago to take on the Bulls at the United Center. That means he’d need to just drop a couple buckets to move past MJ into third place on the all-time scoring list.
For a player who so obviously mimicked MJ on his way to five rings with the Lakers, Mamba might pass his idol in Chicago, where MJ scored almost 30,000 of his career points (we always try and scrub MJ’s time in Washington from our memory), but that’s where he reached the 30,000 point club.
Before averaging just 13.8 points per game in six contests during his injury-plagued 2013-14 season, Kobe had averaged better than 21 PPG for 14-straight seasons. While it’s unlikely he’ll fall short of the 21 PPG plateau he needs to pass the GOAT in Chicago, he might actually overtake MJ before traveling to the United Center.
Still, after the NBA released the 2014-15 schedule last night on NBA TV, the quintuple-header on Christmas Day was a day that stuck out for us. Now, with a chance Kobe passes MJ IN CHICAGO, we just got even more goosebumps.
What do you think?
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