Giving a lift to a city and a franchise still reeling from Hurricane Katrina, Kobe Bryant improvised a fourth consecutive 50-point night before a record crowd in the last NBA game of the season in New Orleans

	Despite being doubled by the Hornets, Bryant dazzled in leading the Lakers to their fourth straight victory. Greg Nelson/SI

Basketball was never meant to be played to the thumping, mechanical cadence of hip-hop; the NBA is best suited to the impulsive rhythms of jazz, and that is what Kobe Bryant played to last Friday night in the cradle of jazz, New Orleans. From the troubled drama of Bryant's past has emerged a blissful eloquence that, like Dixieland, is both disciplined and liberating. His jump shot is an elaborate riff that holds an audience rapt: Shoes squeak in panic around Kobe as he gathers his breath, his shoulders swaying to the ball-beat at his fingertips, a distracting glance this way as he bursts there into space, corkscrewing as he rises up and up, his right leg splayed like a clarinetist leaning back in full-blown solo.

"The key," Bryant said afterward, as if reciting a lesson of everyone from Louis Armstrong to Wynton Marsalis, "is to take your time."

In the last of six NBA games to be played in New Orleans this season before the Hornets return full time next fall, Bryant achieved something that hadn't been done in 45 years. Not since the night Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in Hershey, Pa., had an NBA player scored 50 points or more in four consecutive games, but that's what Bryant did over an eight-day span. What made Bryant's spree all the more exhilarating was how it elevated his team: His Los Angeles Lakers had lost seven straight when he was inspired to take an extended solo. Bryant scored 65 points against the Portland Trail Blazers on March 16, followed by 50 against the Minnesota Timberwolves, followed by 60 against the Memphis Grizzlies, followed 24 hours later by 50 against the Hornets -- and his Lakers won every time. The streak ended on Sunday night when Bryant had only 43 points in a victory over the Golden State Warriors, but if the league's scoring leader (31.0 points per game at week's end) is still performing at this ethereal level come the playoffs -- he claimed he wasn't tired despite averaging just 157 seconds of rest in the four games -- Western Conference contenders won't want anything to do with the Lakers. "It's phenomenal," says L.A. coach Phil Jackson, who used to complain that Bryant's prolific shooting was antithetical to the Lakers' larger goals.

Yet maybe the most promising indication of Bryant's maturity was his recognition of the larger meaning of last Friday's game to the Big Easy. He was proud that he helped draw a crowd of 18,535 (a New Orleans Arena record for a regular-season game) at a time when the city and its nomadic team are starved for good news. "They have a sense of appreciation for the game of basketball because this team was almost taken away from them," Bryant said.