(Soccer365.com) - With three NBA Championships to his credit with the Los Angeles Lakers it is hard to think of Kobe Bryant asking what if. What if he and some of the other great athletes in the NBA had grown up with a soccer ball rather than a basketball bouncing around the house?

"If myself, Tracy McGrady and LeBron James had a soccer ball...

(Soccer365.com) - With three NBA Championships to his credit with the Los Angeles Lakers it is hard to think of Kobe Bryant asking what if. What if he and some of the other great athletes in the NBA had grown up with a soccer ball rather than a basketball bouncing around the house?

"If myself, Tracy McGrady and LeBron James had a soccer ball at our feet instead of a basketball at 2 years old, with our size, it could have been something," Bryant told the Chicago Tribune. "If we had played soccer all our lives, I think [the U.S. soccer team] would have been pretty potent [in the World Cup]."

Bryant grew up playing both basketball and soccer after his dad moved to Italy when the young Kobe was 6 years old. While in Europe he developed and appreciation for the game so adored around the globe and still credits his time playing soccer has helping improve his basketball skills although did point out he was no soccer superstar.

"I'm comfortable [with basketball] footwork because I played soccer," Bryant said, "from changing up rhythms to foot speed, to being comfortable with having my right foot as my pivot foot and my left foot as my pivot foot."

"I wasn't anything spectacular," Bryant said. "I would have moments of doing something crazy that really wasn't done on purpose. I'd pull off a nice move that was unintentional.”

After returning to the U.S. in 1991, Bryant’s attention turned solely to basketball and his dream of playing in the NBA but knows had he remained in Europe he would have continued to play soccer and just maybe would have wound up playing for his team, the Rossoneri.

"I would have kept playing [soccer], that's for sure," Bryant said. "I loved basketball so much, but I also wanted to play for AC Milan. That was my team growing up."