HOUSTON — Seven of the 24 participants in tonight's NBA All-Star Game have scored 30 or more points against the Jazz this season. Two of them, Cleveland's LeBron James and Philadelphia's Allen Iverson, dropped 51 and 46, respectively.
Heck, even five non-All-Stars have put up 30 or more against Utah in 2005-06. And it's not just the Jazz on the receiving end of points pouring in.
Forty-plus-point games have become such a common occurrence in the NBA, only a truly incredible performance — fellow All-Star Kobe Bryant's 81 against Toronto last Jan. 22, for instance — makes one stop and wonder if any given evening's high-scorer total is not a typo.
In fact, the league's top three scorers at the All-Star break this season — Bryant (35.0), Iverson (33.1) and James (31.2) — are averaging more than 30 points per game.
Just a few other All-Star scoring accomplishments this season:New Jersey's Vince Carter had 51 against his old Toronto team a couple nights before Christmas;
Indiana's Jermaine O'Neal became just the third Pacer ever to score 50-plus when he had 55 against Milwaukee on January 4;
Detroit's Chauncey Billups and Toronto's Chris Bosh both had career-highs of 37 before the first week of January was done.
What in the name of Wilt Chamberlain is going on here?
Shaquille O'Neal — who has been chosen for 13 straight All-Star Games, a consecutive selection streak topped only by retired Jazz star Karl Malone and NBA legend Jerry West — has a hunch.
"It's probably a mixture of everything — the hand-check rules, guys hitting shots. I think guys are getting a lot more freedom with the ball," the former Los Angeles Laker and current Miami Heat center said. "I'm sure that all those guys scoring all those points are guys that always have the ball.
"When guys always have the ball, and are given the green light to do what they want to do," added O'Neal, who averaged less than 30 (29.7) when he led the league in scoring en route to winning MVP honors for the 1999-2000 season, "they're going to shoot 20 times, shoot 40 times, shoot 50 times."
Well, most are.
When Bryant scored his 81 on 28-of-46 shooting from the field, second only to Chamberlain's fabled 100-point game for Philadelphia in 1962, eyebrows were raised.
Nearly a full month later, many still are — some in continued wide-eyed disbelief, others with eyes rolling back into heads wondering just how selfish one must be to score so much.
"Eighty-one is 81. Eighty-one is a lot of points," Detroit All-Star Rip Hamilton said when asked Friday about the feat. "When I was home and someone called me and said he got 70 in the fourth quarter and still time left on the clock, I was like 'Give him the ball, let him get 80.' "
A scorer's mentality, if ever there was one.
"He played a fantastic game," whispered O'Neal, whose oft-fractured relationship with Bryant supposedly is on the mend — but also was a primary reason he left the Lakers. "I actually saw it. He shot the ball well, and he was feeling it. Whenever a player is feeling it, he should go for it. It was a fantastic, historical performance."
In Los Angeles, few would argue, Bryant was simply too egotistical for he and also quite-proud-of-himself O'Neal to coexist any longer than they did.
Asked to identify the most talented player in the game today, Jermaine O'Neal — who is injured, and will not play tonight — did not hesitate. "If I had to pick one guy to win a game," he said, "it would be Kobe."
Perhaps more telling is Jermaine O'Neal's answer to the follow-up question "And if you could choose one guy to play with?"
"Steve Nash," he responded, referencing the Phoenix Suns All-Star point and reigning NBA MVP.
It would take a large degree of selfishness, another All-Star who will play against Bryant tonight seemed to suggest, for him to ever score 81.
"That's not my game," James said. "I like to do everything, not just shoot the ball and score. I couldn't see myself scoring that many points in a game."
Bryant, however, could.
In fact, he did.
After doing so, he even has a hunch as to what it would take to score 100 all by himself.
"A lot of shots, and a lot of makes," Bryant said. "High-quality shots. You'd have to get to the free-throw line, as well."
If anyone can, conventional All-Star wisdom seems to go, Bryant might be the guy.
"He's a very driven guy," Miami All-Star Dwyane Wade said. "I think he has fine-tuned his game a little more than probably the previous years, where now his pull-up game is unstoppable."
He can score, in other words, from virtually anywhere on the floor.
With scoring on the rise, that's something more and more All-Stars seemingly can say today — yet something even Chamberlain could not back in his day.
E-mail: tbuckley@desnews.com