SALT LAKE CITY – The ultimate thrill seeker has been having so much bleeping fun meeting this particular challenge that he’s going to be a little sorry to see it go.

Poor Kobe Bryant. The torn lunotriquetral ligament in his right wrist is actually healing.

Even as he revealed his seemingly good news about the wrist improving despite all this abuse he has put it through to stand as the NBA’s 33-year-old scoring leader, Bryant practically scoffed late Wednesday night at the actual importance of him being 100 percent again.

“I scored back-to-back 40’s with a (bleeped)-up wrist,” Bryant said, his eyes still gleaming at the just-completed achievement. “What does it matter if it’s still (bleeped)-up in the playoffs?”

No one had scored 40 points all season until Bryant put up 48 on Phoenix and then 40 in Utah. It had taken nearly twice as long as the shortest previous time at the start of an NBA season for any player to get 40, yet here was Bryant carpal-tunneling his way to double trouble on consecutive nights.

The feat felt so sweet, especially with the Lakers having won four consecutive games to leave 4-4 far behind, that Bryant wasn’t all that excited about the wrist healing.

But it is.

“It’s getting better now,” he said. “It’s already getting better. I’ve played so many games; I’ve gotten hit on it so many times. And it’s still improving. So I’ll be fine.”

Will it be healed in weeks or …?

“Does it matter? The time schedule? It’ll get better eventually. I don’t know when.”

By the playoffs …?

“By the playoffs, it should be fine.”

Bryant has done enough in these first 12 regular-season games jammed into just 18 days to be legitimately excited about the playoffs again. With the Lakers committing to Mike Brown’s defense, Andrew Bynum making various big plays and Pau Gasol having put last spring behind him, Bryant doesn’t have to bottle his promise any longer.

Bryant was right when he warned everyone in training camp, “You’ll see,” in suggesting a spring had returned to his step after an innovative blood-spinning procedure for his balky right knee.

He’s confident enough that late Wednesday night he called himself “only 33” as he laughed about being written off as the old man we’d never see dominate again.

“It’s interesting to me,” Bryant said. “I’ve been in the league 16 years, but I’m only 33. So people like to count the miles and stuff like that, but they don’t factor in the intelligence and the preparation and the talent of my training staff.”

Longtime friend Derek Fisher said after the 48-point game that it’s not yet possible to gauge just how potent Bryant remains: “If it wasn’t for the wrist, I think you’d have seen much more of it.”

Bryant acknowledges the wrist has hurt his 3-point shooting and definitely his ball-handling. The latter, however, has been a blessing in disguise with how quickly Brown tilted the offense away from Bryant overdribbling and toward screens that set Bryant up in his preferred mid-post and elbow-isolation spots – areas where he is difficult to double-team effectively.

Since Brown’s tweaks, Bryant has scored 37, 30, 39, 26, 48 and 40 – while shooting 50.3 percent from the field. The 48-point game was all about “flow,” scoring smoothly and in the context of team offense. The follow-up had very little flow – as Bryant suspected it wouldn’t because of the team’s fatigue, Utah’s altitude and Raja Bell’s Kobe-stopping mission – but the Lakers still needed enough juice to be squeezed out of the lemons.

Without Bryant making shots in Utah, the Lakers lose, flat-out. Gasol said afterward about him and Bynum inside: “It was not a very effective game on our part.” The game was the sort Bryant prides himself on winning with willpower, which is actually more of what all this stuff with the wrist is about.

The injection Bryant takes before every game numbs the wrist for five or six hours. He pushes it where he needs it to go on the court, and aside from rotating it all the time to maintain range of motion and fearing a blow so strong it could knock the bones out of alignment, playing with it is sort of the easy part.

There’s so much maintenance and treatment at all hours otherwise – and so much ice that you’d think Bryant would have had someone design some Nike Ice product for him by now. But all that work is stuff Bryant, always believing there is a solution and being dedicated to finding his way, doesn’t mind doing.

Asked if all this is better or worse than playing through the avulsion fracture in his right index finger in 2009-10, Bryant said: “Worse. I could hide the finger; I can’t hide the wrist.”

Yes, Bryant might say, “Not that it matters …” but he knows deep down it’s a good thing the wrist is healing. It’s just that the part of him enjoying this so much knows he never pulled this off with the bad finger: The last time he had consecutive games of at least 40 points was November 2009. He didn’t hurt that index finger until a month later.

Bryant has upped his season scoring average to 30.3, ahead of LeBron James’ 29 – which brings us to the touchy question I asked Brown before the game Wednesday night.

Unlike Phil Jackson, who coached Michael Jordan before Bryant and often outlined the similarities in tenacity and toughness, Brown couldn’t lump his former superstar James and Bryant together if he tried.

“There’s just a different feel to the two guys,” Brown said.

It was clear from what Brown suggested that there’s a harder edge to Bryant (and even James’ contemporaries Dwyane Wade and Kevin Durant) that James still lacks.

“LeBron is a guy who is still learning and still growing, and the reality of it is that being down there with Dwyane Wade has helped him,” Brown said. “They’re different personalities. LeBron, he’s a guy who likes to laugh and joke. He knows obviously there’s a time to be serious, but he’s youthful.

“Kobe is not as much. Kobe’s more serious-minded and so on and so forth. But Kobe knows how to have fun in his own way, too.”

In his own way, he does.

The guy who won his favorite NBA championship in 2010 with that busted finger would be absolutely thrilled to win another this year while doing shots – those he takes to the wrist and those he makes with the wrist.

Oh, well. Looks like he might have to settle for playing it straight.