NBA star Derrick Rose said in court documents filed last week that he had consensual sex with a former girlfriend who has accused him of rape.
The Chicago Bulls point guard and two friends are accused in civil court of drugging and gang-raping the woman two years ago.
Rose told reporters at Monday’s Bulls media day that the allegation is false.
“I feel like I’m on the right track as far as who I want to be at, in my life and the direction I want to go,” he said. “I just feel like when you’re that focused, people try to take you down. I’m very confident that I will be proven innocent.”
The woman, called “Jane Doe” in the suit, charges that in August of 2013, Rose and his two friends put some kind of drug in her drink while she was at a home in Beverly Hills where the basketball star was living at the time. A female friend of the plaintiff was concerned about her as she became incapacitated, the lawsuit says, and put her in a cab so she could get home.
According to the lawsuit, Rose and his two friends went to the woman’s apartment early the next morning, entered through an unlocked door and took turns raping her. When she came to later, she didn’t call police, the suit explained, because she was “ashamed and embarrassed by what had happened to her” and she didn’t want her conservative family to find out.
In Rose’s legal response, the Chicago star’s attorney says the woman consented to sex with more than one of the three defendants on several occasions. Rose also says the woman invited them to her apartment, buzzed them into the complex, opened her front door and consented to “additional group activities later that evening.”
Lawyer Mark Baute says the woman became upset a few weeks or months later after she asked to be paid back for a sex toy she used.
In the suit, “Jane Doe” says she has few memories of the incident.
“However, Jane does recall brutal details of the rape,” the lawsuit says.
The woman is seeking unspecified damages for lost wages, mental pain and anguish and severe emotional distress.
CNN’s calls to her lawyers on Tuesday were not immediately returned.
It appears the case is only a civil matter. A online search of Los Angeles Superior Criminal criminal court records to ascertain whether a complaint had ever been filed against Rose found no results.
Rose representative Lisa Cohen said in August the basketball player once had a nonexclusive relationship with the plaintiff that lasted several years. The woman had “no complaints about Mr. Rose until various lawyers began to surface and demand that the plaintiff be paid millions of dollars,” the representative added.
Rose, who comes in at No. 20 on Forbes’ list of the world’s highest paid athletes (when it comes to salary and endorsement deals), signed a $95 million contract with the Bulls in 2011 and was named the NBA’s most valuable player the same year. Injuries forced him to miss about half of the 2011-2012 season and most of the 2013-2014 season, but he came back to average almost 18 points per game in the 2014-2015 season.
Forbes reports he also has a $185 million shoe deal with Adidas.
Rose will have surgery Wednesday after being hit in the face with an elbow during practice. The Bulls said it is uncertain how much time he will miss. The Bulls preseason opener is October 6 and the regular season begins October 27.
