There are numbers in sports and then there are numbers in sports.

56. Joe DiMaggio.

88. UCLA basketball.

8. Michael Phelps.

18. Jack Nicklaus.

100. Wilt Chamberlain.

511. Cy Young.

38,387. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

(We'll leave 73, 70, 66 and 762 out of the conversation for obvious reasons.)

You don't need me to tell you if we're talking about hits, or gold medals, or majors, or points, or wins, or homeruns. You already know.

Kobe Bryant already owns one of these iconic numbers thanks to that January night four years ago when he hung 81 points on the Toronto Raptors.

Now he owns another.

Bryant reached 25,000 career points on Thursday, a staggering total that just 14 other players have reached in the 63-year history of the NBA, with a free throw in the second quarter against Cleveland.

"That's what I do best," Bryant said on Sunday. "Steve Nash is a great passer, I'm a great scorer. It's what I do."

It's what he does oh so well. With flair and pizzazz. With precision and panache. With first-quarter free throws and fourth-quarter game winners. From darn-near half court against Miami and from literally behind the backboard against Oklahoma City. On the block and on the wing. A pull-up jumper off the glass and a spin move into a finger roll.

While the rest of his peers in the league are racking up followers on Twitter, he is amassing points.

He scores. Always has. Always will.

"I think it just came easiest to me because, at an early age [when I was] five or six years old, I could put it in my left hand, put it in my right and that age, if you can go left against those kids it's like shooting fish in a barrel," Bryant said about his earliest scoring memories.

"I just became more curious about it the better I got at it all the way until now."

"This is a guy that uses the open floor well," Lakers coach Phil Jackson said when asked to sum up Bryant's offensive assault. "He knows how to post up. He drives. He can shoot it -- he increased his shooting range and capabilities over the years. He finds a way to score. It's not the most important thing but he knows it carries a lot of weight. He has the invincibility idea that there's no one out there that can stop him […] he carries that attitude with him."

Pau Gasol also praised Bryant's mentality.