Kendrick Perkins doesn't just believe Kobe Bryant has a better basketball narrative than LeBron James, but “the best story” of any player in NBA history. Why? The way the Los Angeles Lakers legend “worked his way back to the top” after a 2003 rape accusation threatened to derail his career entirely.

Perkins' remarks came on Friday's edition of First Take, when ESPN randomly tasked he and Stephen A. Smith with debating the decades-long tales James and Bryant spent in the NBA spotlight.

“When it comes down to Kob winning three NBA championships with Shaq, Kobe was at his highest. I'm talking about when he was with Adidas, all of us had the 8s, the Kobs on our feet, rocking the Adidas,” Kendrick Perkins said. “And all of a sudden, Kob was dealing with the situation in Denver. And most people, when dealing with something when your livelihood is on the line, I wouldn't have showed up to work, not to that capacity. Kobe was still showing up to work and giving people that work on the floor, giving people straight buckets. Throughout that period he had lost endorsements, hundreds of millions of dollars, he was getting booed in every arena, and he basically had to start from the bottom and work his way back to the top, and he did that in great fashion, as far as getting back his endorsements, as far as building back his reputation as one of the best players in the game, winning two NBA championships, two Finals MVPs, the list goes on.”

A 19-year-old woman accused Bryant of rape on July 1st, 2003 at a hotel in Edwards, Colorado, two hours of west of Denver. No criminal charges were ever filed against the Los Angeles Lakers superstar because his accuser—who'd received death threats and hate mail after her identity was leaked to the public—decided not to testify against him in court. She ultimately filed a civil suit versus Bryant, one that was settled in 2005 for an undisclosed amount legal experts estimated at more than $2.5 million.

On the same day the criminal case against him was dismissed, Bryant issued a statement apologizing to the woman, noting that while he believes their encounter was consensual, he had come to understand during legal proceedings “how she feels that she did not consent.”

Bryant faced no discipline by the NBA as a result of the allegations made against him. Nike honored the $45 million endorsement deal Bryant signed a month before he was accused, and he started the 2004 All-Star Game, receiving more fan votes than any other player in the Western Conference. He went on to win back-to-back titles with Los Angeles in 2009 and 2010, teaming with fellow Hall-of-Famer Pau Gasol after the Lakers acquired him following Bryant's largely forgotten trade request during the summer of 2007.

The late Bryant is broadly considered a top-15 player in NBA history, if not better, with an enduring legacy of maniacal competitiveness and commitment to his craft that continues to inspire multiple generations of hoopers. You don't often see Bryant's millions of admirers worldwide using his alleged rape of a 19-year-old as justification of his superiority, though, and rightfully so.

Leave that flagrant whitewashing to Kendrick Perkins and First Take.

“And so when I think about how he has two jerseys retired, two numbers retired in one of the greatest franchises in sports history, I think about Kobe and the route he had to take, the high, the low, back to the high, and his story after basketball was about to be a greater story than his story on the floor,” Perkins said. “When I think about Kob, he has the greatest story in NBA history in my eyes.”