When Kobe Bryant had to go through the grind of workouts and treatments to get ready for another season, he talked seriously about wanting to just walk away from all of it in two years.

Now that he’s a couple games into a season — the fun part of the job, playing games and competing — he is singing a different tune.

Kobe was interviewed by CNN Turkey reporter Barbaros Tapan after a recent game and had this to say (via trendBasket.net, hat tip to Hoopshype.com).

“My aim is to play until I’m 40 years old and I believe I can do that. This year, we added very good players to our squad. Steve Nash, Dwight Howard will make us stronger. Right now, things are not going very well but I believe it’ll get better soon.” “During the lock-out, I had offers from Turkey and other countries. Beşiktaş was interested in me and they had talks with my agent, but I want to use the lock-out time to recover from my injuries and spend more time with my family so I turned the offers down. Who knows, maybe one day I play basketball in Turkey.”

Make no mistake, if Kobe wants to stay the Lakers will keep him and pay the price — he may make $30 million next season but he is worth more than that to the Lakers (literally, the revenue he generates far exceeds his contract). They would blow up those long-shot Lebron plans to keep him. (The only question is will he take a Tim Duncan/Kevin Garnett style paycut so the Lakers can compete?)

Just recently Kobe was talking about walking away at age 36, now he wants to go four years beyond that?

The reality is Kobe doesn’t know. Some days he feels the weight of his body saying “you know, you might want slow down a little.” Then he looks and sees how well he is playing this season with more talent around him — 26.8 points a game on a ridiculous 59.7 percent shooting — and he feels like he can do this forever. Or at least four more years.

I never really bought that Kobe would walk away in two years, not if he was playing well and relatively healthy, but I’m not sure he does four years either. At some point the nagging of his body will drown out the other voices and he will walk away, and my guess is that’s a year or two past the current two years on his deal.

As for playing overseas… Kobe is not going to play in Turkey or any other European market. Sorry, but I cannot see it. But if you’re a smart businessman you never close that door. Keeping hope alive is good for the Kobe brand.