Los Angeles ? Thanks to Kobe Bryant, you can add another item to the list of things that might happen in our lifetime, unlikely as they might be. All of a sudden another player scoring 100 points in an NBA game seems just inside the reality/fantasy border, like a female president, manned spaceflight to Mars or a hip-hop awards show without violence.

It might not happen anytime soon, but …

“We’ve got to say it’s possible,” said George Gervin, four-time scoring champion for the San Antonio Spurs. “(Bryant) proved that it’s possible.”

Since Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points for the Philadelphia Warriors against the New York Knicks on March 2, 1962, the closest anyone had come was the 73-point game Denver Nugget David Thompson produced in 1978. That left a gap of 27 points – equivalent to Shaquille O’Neal’s career scoring average entering this season.

Then Bryant went for 81 against the Toronto Raptors on Sunday night.

“He was only 19 from there, and he played 42 (out of 48) minutes,” Gervin said. “Let’s be realistic. He got that close. You know how everybody says Wilt’s record will never be broken? He came close.”

Can Bryant do it? Put it this way: He has a better chance of scoring 100 than the Lakers do of winning a championship. None of the nine previous 70-point performances came for a team that won a championship that season. The fact that a team is so dependent on one player for scoring indicates a lack of balance.

But it could be a key element in the perfect combination it would take for a run at Chamberlain.

“For a player to score 100 points or 81 points in a game, his teammates have to be willing to go along with it,” said Gary Pomerantz, author of the book “Wilt, 1962”, which focuses on Chamberlain’s 100-point night.

That the Lakers thus far have been willing to go along for the ride speaks to “either their feelings for Kobe or their heightened sense of curiosity,” Pomerantz said.

The rest of the guys know the only way their names will be in the Hall of Fame is if they appear alongside Bryant’s in a historic box score. So they defer. Or Bryant takes the decision out of their hands and just shoots the ball himself.

That’s the advantage Bryant has as a guard. He doesn’t need anyone to pass him the ball in the frontcourt. He also can float around three-point territory, an option that didn’t exist for Chamberlain.

Bryant probably would have to match his career high of 12 made three-pointers in addition to making more than 20 free throws. And he’d have to hold up for a full 48 minutes. Bryant looked wiped out at the end of Sunday’s game.

“I got 63 in 33 minutes, and I was exhausted,” Gervin said.

“I think it’s more mental than it was physical. … The concentration, and the focus. It’s like high blood pressure.”

There’s one record Gervin already took from Chamberlain: the single-quarter record, which Gervin set at 33.

“I’m expecting that to be broken pretty soon,” Gervin said.

These days no number seems safe.