My fellow nerds and I will retire to the nerdery with our calculators

Earlier today, I saw the following piece of trivia on ESPN.com's mobile site: "Derrick Rose is the first Chicago Bulls player to score 40 points in a game against the Spurs since Michael Jordan."

My first thought was: not bad.

My second thought was: how many Bulls players have scored 40 points in a game since Jordan left at all?

As it turns out, not very many. The Bulls, from the start of the 1998-99 season until now, have had just ten regular season games in which one of their players has scored 40 points. Rose's is one; Jalen Rose, Elton Brand and Luol Deng had one each; Jamal Crawford had two; and Ben Gordon had four. That's the entire list. Ten games, six guys. So it seemed like the fact that Rose was the first Bull to score 40 on the Spurs since Jordan wasn't too surprising given that very few Bulls since Jordan had scored 40 on anybody. (To put it another way, in Jordan's final 1997-98 season alone, he scored 40 points or more twelve times, plus twice more in the playoffs. Even adding the playoffs to every 1998-99 to 2010-11 Bull only gets them to eleven.) I posted as much on Facebook.

But then I started to wonder if that was unfair in a way, because 40 points is a pretty rare mark to hit unless you're a really elite scorer. In other words, it seemed fairly likely that most teams' records over the last thirteen seasons wouldn't look that much different from the Bulls', especially for teams that rarely had elite scorers and didn't spend the entire thirteen seasons or close to it with playoff caliber teams (as the Bulls were pretty lousy for almost half that span).

And so, thanks to the Basketball-Reference play index, I came up with the following numbers:

Most 40-point games: Lakers, 129

Not terribly surprising - 106 of those games belong to Kobe Bryant, and he also owns the highest-scoring single game in that span, with the infamous 81-point game.

Second-most 40-point games: 76ers, 70

All 70 belong to Allen Iverson. The 76ers have the second-most 40-point games total but are also the only team with just one player to score 40 in a game for them during the span.

Other teams with more than 40: Cavaliers 49, Wizards 43

42 of Cleveland's 49 belong to LeBron James, unsurprisingly. Gilbert Arenas leads the Wizards with 28, but 8 of the 43 are Michael Jordan - meaning that he almost had as many 40-point games as anyone who played for the Bulls even though he was at the end of his career and kind of washed up.

Mean 40-point games: 26.4
Median 40-point games: 20

129 is sort of an extreme outlier, so I also did the median, which gives you a more realistic number. In other words, the Bulls had half as many 40-point games as an "average" franchise during this span.

Teams with fewer 40-point games than the Bulls: Pacers (9), Jazz (9), Grizzlies (7), Bobcats (6), Clippers (5)

The Bobcats haven't existed the whole time, so it's a little unfair to them. The Clippers' number of five is even more pathetic when you consider that Blake Griffin has two of them just this year - and no one else has more than one. So in a 12-season span, there were just three Clippers games in which someone on their team scored 40 points. That is awful.

Most different players to score 40: Warriors, 10

Not really surprising when you think about the Warriors' style of play. The Warriors also had the most total 40-point games (29) for a team that didn't have any one player reach double figures (Monta Ellis had the most with seven).

Players to lead more than one team in 40-point games: Tracy McGrady (30 for Orlando, 15 for Houston) and Vince Carter (17 for New Jersey, 14 for Toronto)

McGrady had a 62-point game with the Magic, the highest single-game output during the period of anyone not named Kobe.

Is this the kind of thing that's only interesting to me and Joe Posnanski? Probably. But I'm posting it anyway, because what else am I going to do with it?

Here are the stats for every team, since I already bothered to look them up.

Team / 40 pt Games / Different players to score 40 / Player with most / Player with highest scoring game

Lakers / 129 / 4 / Bryant, 106 / Bryant, 81
76ers / 70 / 1 / Iverson, 70 / Iverson, 60
Cavaliers / 49 / 5 / James, 42 / James, 56
Wizards / 43 / 7 / Arenas, 28 / Arenas, 60
Thunder / 36 / 6 / Durant, 17 / R. Allen, 54
Heat / 36 / 4 / Wade, 31 / Wade, 55
Nuggets / 34 / 6 / Anthony, 19 / Iverson, 51
Magic / 34 / 4 / McGrady, 30 / McGrady, 62
Suns / 30 / 9 / Stoudemire, 15 / Delk, 53
Warriors / 29 / 10 / Ellis, 7 / Jamison, 51
Nets / 27 / 5 / Carter, 17 / Carter, 51
Rockets / 25 / 7 / McGrady, 15 / McGrady, 48
Raptors / 25 / 4 / Carter, 14 / Carter, 51
Knicks / 24 / 8 / Marbury, 5 / Houston, 53
Celtics / 21 / 2 / Pierce, 19 / Pierce, 50
Bucks / 19 / 6 / Redd, 11 / Redd, 57
Pistons / 19 / 4 / Stackhouse, 10 / Stackhouse, 57
Mavericks / 19 / 4 / Nowitzki, 16 / Nowitzki, 53
Kings / 16 / 4 / Kevin Martin, 6 / Webber, 51
Blazers / 13 / 7 / Roy, 4 / D. Stoudamire, 54
Hornets / 13 / 4 / Paul and West, 5 / Mashburn, 50
Spurs / 13 / 3 / Ginobili, 6 / Parker, 55
T-Wolves / 11 / 7 / Garnett, 4 / Garnett, 47
Hawks / 11 / 4 / J. Johnson, 6 / Abdur-Rahim, 50
Bulls / 10 / 6 / Gordon, 4 / Crawford, 50
Pacers / 9 / 5 / Granger, 4 / J. O'Neal, 55
Jazz / 9 / 5 / K. Malone, 3 / Millsap, 46
Grizzlies / 7 / 5 / Gasol and M. Miller, 2 / M. Miller, 45
Bobcats / 6 / 3 / G. Wallace, 4 / S. Jackson, 43
Clippers / 5 / 4 / Griffin, 2 / Griffin, 47