LeBron James picks Kobe Bryant as teammate in 2-on-2 game against Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen

If LeBron James was looking to further endear himself to Lakers fans, he picked the perfect way to do it.

On Monday, LeBron hosted a Q&A on his Twitter account that didn’t go nearly as badly as one would assume a Q&A from an account with 51.3 million followers might go. Among the questions asked came from our own SB Nation account as they posed the question of the one past or present teammate LeBron would pick to take on Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen in a 2-on-2 game.

Naturally, LeBron’s answer comes with some caveats. Most people, when debating that question, would have thought of his NBA teammates. But LeBron clearly just thought of anyone he’s teamed up with ever and James and Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant both were teammates of his on Team USA.

James and Bryant only teamed up a handful of times for Team USA, winning gold medals together at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. (Fun fact discovered while doing some research for this piece: Kobe Bryant finished a perfect 26-0 across three tournaments for the national team).

Obviously, there never is and never was a chance of this happening, but in terms of hypothetical games, there are hardly any more compelling than Kobe-LeBron against MJ-Pippen. For the narratives alone with the latter two always being compared to Jordan, seeing that trio playing in a game would be enthralling.

Outside of this match-up, having 2-on-2 and 3-on-3 games would be a very welcome addition to the NBA All-Star Weekend schedule. The problem would be getting the elite players to take part in it and having players play at a high level in them, but imagine a game with LeBron and Kevin Durant vs. Giannis Antetokounmpo and Luka Doncic, for example.

Who wouldn’t be tuning into that?

But in terms of all-time, what-if match-ups, it wouldn’t get much better than seeing LeBron and Kobe team up against MJ and Pippen.

For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts. You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.