The NBA is all about how many points you score, and how many points you let the other guy score. If your team scores more than the other team, you win.

For that reason alone, it isn’t really very difficult to write an article educating people on picking players for points because everyone already does that naturally. There are a few things, however, that might be nice to know before you go into the draft.

Here they are…

1. Kobe Bryant scored way more than any other player in the NBA last year, close to 300 more than 2nd place Lebron James. If you pick him up in the first round, you are practically guaranteed to do well in points.

2. Players that score over 20 points per game are a hot commodity and usually go towards the beginning of the draft. If you choose to go for players like Jason Kidd or Marcus Camby in the first couple of rounds, you are going to really have to make up for it with really high scoring picks in the other three of the top four rounds if you hope to compete in points scored. Even guys like Shawn Marion, Steve Nash, Yao Ming, and Chris Paul who aren’t that bad of scorers but you might choose to pick up in the first or second rounds are destined to leave you in a bit of a hole if you don’t make up for it.

As tempted as you might be to take Jason Kidd in the first round and Marcus Camby or Yao Ming in the second round or to take Shawn Marion in the first round and Chris Paul in the second round to nail down some great rebounds, assists, blocks, and steals, I would advise against it. If you don’t take points towards the beginning of the draft, you aren’t going to find them much later and you sure won’t find more than a couple of surprises available in the regular season (and even those won’t last much longer than it takes for a star to return from an injury). If you do choose to ignore my warning, pay very close attention to the players who will be available in later rounds because you are really going to have to stack up on them.

3. Make note of players who scored over 1400 points last year and will be available outside of the first four rounds. These players, in order of points scored last year, are likely to be…

• Ben Gordon – 1753 points
• Elton Brand – 1642 points (but remember that he is expected to be out for months)
• Zach Randolph – 1608 points
• Eddy Curry – 1576 points (but his free throw percentage will kill you)
• Luol Deng – 1540 points
• Richard Hamilton – 1485 points
• Tony Parker – 1429 points
• Mehmet Okur – 1405 points
• Mike Bibby – 1403 points
• Ricky Davis – 1374 points (I added him to this list because, without Garnett, he will probably be in th 1400 club)

4. Make careful note about the FG% of these players. The more shots they take, the more FG% matters. And all of these guys take a LOT of shots. This is both a benefit, like Amare Stoudemire and Carlos Boozer, or a curse, like Gilbert Arenas and Mike Bibby.

5. Players who are likely sleeper picks for this category are…

• Vince Carter – late 2nd round
• Kevin Martin – 4th round
• Eddy Curry – late rounds (but, again, watch his FT%)
• Luol Deng – 5th round
• Leandro Barbosa – 4th round
• Ricky Davis – 5th round
• Kirk Hinrich – 5th round
• Corey Maggette – late rounds
• Manu Ginobili – 4th round