LOS ANGELES — Basketball superstar Derrick Rose testified under oath Tuesday that the NBA tells rookies to take used condoms with them after they have sex with women.
Rose is being sued in a federal civil lawsuit by a woman known only by Jane Doe who accuses the former Chicago Bulls point guard of raping her with two other men in on August 27, 2013. Rose, Ryan Allen, and Randall Hampton all deny the charges.
“In my profession they teach us to make sure you get the condom if you can’t flush it… It’s kind of normal with my profession,” Rose said. He said he placed the used condom into its wrapper and then pocketed it.
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Rose, a prized point guard for the anemic New York Knicks, said disposing of the condom with his semen in it was taught to him during the NBA’s “Rookie Transition Program” in Orlando, Florida where he received “classes on sex.”
“You have to be very careful what you do with your condoms,” he said he recalled from his class in 2008 when he was selected as the first pick in the NBA draft by the Bulls. “This girl wasn’t someone I was going to introduce to my family or my mom… No way I was going to leave a condom anywhere around her apartment. I was trained to do it.”
When probed as to why he didn’t ask the woman, known by court papers as Jane Doe, where the bathroom was and flush it down the toilet like his co-defendants did, Rose said he “normally would” but on this occasion he chose to take it with him. “At the time I had it in my mind to take it [with me],” he said. “If I had known where her bathroom was I would have flushed it.”
The accuser’s attorney accused Rose of trying to destroy evidence.
“You didn’t want anybody to know you were there,” said Waukeen McCoy, a San Francisco-based attorney.
Rose counters that he was being chivalrous.
“It was probably in my pocket because I didn’t want to be disrespectful.”
The 28-year-old player was questioned further by attorneys for the woman, who is suing him and two others for $21.3 million in damages.
Rose recalled meeting Doe at a Hollywood club called Playhouse back in 2011. The pair engaged in a sexual relationship, which included comp tickets to jet to Chicago and spend time with the basketball bigshot, he said.
On Tuesday, Rose recounted in salacious detail the evening in question.
Rose remembered earlier in the day receiving a series of sexual text messages from Doe.
After sending a suggestive photo of herself, she texted Rose at 9:30 a.m., “My inspiration.”
And then when Rose replied, “What’s that for?” she wrote “U the reason why I wake up horny.”
The two arranged to meet that night at Rose’s rental tucked in Beverly Hills. He asked her to bring a friend. “Surprise me wit a chick if [you] can.”
The woman asked him to get tequila and she bragged about a sex belt she bought that day. “Babe I need that pink belt I sent you in the picture…” the woman texted later that day. Rose—who claimed he never saw the erotic item “in person”—still agreed to reimburse her for the belt, along with the cab fare.
Once at Rose’s home, the woman and her friend along with Rose and his pals took a couple of tequila shots. Rose then adjourned for some time to be by himself (he told his attorney he considers himself to be “a loner” reminding the court “I’m a basketball player not a celebrity.”) and upon returning to the pool area, said he saw Doe having sex with his personal assistant Randall Hampton.
“I remember coming back out and seeing her and Randall having sex by the pool,” he testified. “I remember her being naked.”
Rose joined in as he claimed Doe grabbed him as he walked over and she started performing oral sex on him.
Before they left, Rose said he let her know how he was concerned for her well-being telling her to “text me when you make it home.”
Rose explained that coming up in “dangerous” Chicago “you don’t know if it may be the last time so you try to speak being mindful of that.”
The women left and—that’s when Doe texted Rose: “left my belt and my shit in you bathroom. And u need to come to me right now.”
When Rose informed her through text message that he was dispatching someone to pick her back up to his Beverly Hills home, Doe texted him “Come with him babe…. So I want you here too.”
“We on our way,” he replied.
Once at Doe’s address Rose said he waited in the car for almost a half-hour before she appeared “with a night shirt on.”
Rose, Hampton and Ryan Allen, another Chicago childhood friend whose brother is Memphis Grizzlies Tony Allen, all entered and Rose said that Doe called the sexual shots.
“One at a time,” she allegedly announced.
Her attorney McCoy called the incident by its shorthand “running a train”—where one woman takes turns with multiple men waiting in line, but the judge sustained Rose’s attorney’s objection to the vernacular reference.
And Rose had no qualms sharing Doe with his friends because he said, “I wasn’t dating her…we wasn’t in an exclusive relationship.”
To hear Rose tell it he’d never shared Doe with his friends before. But on that night, Allen was first to have sex behind Doe’s bedroom door, followed by Hampton, and Rose last. When Rose entered, Doe told him to “closed the door.”
Rose couldn’t recall exactly how long each man spent with Doe and chided back when pressed by the court, “I’m not gay.” He later admitted that he made the comment because “I’m blunt sometimes.” But also because he respected his friends’ “personal space… and me asking about that was stepping into [their] personal space.”
The color-blind basketball player confirmed that Doe was lying on her back “playing with a pink vibrator” and “she started rubbing on my penis.”
Asked how he could be so sure, Rose said he can’t see red and brown but that pink was no problem.
“There’s different kinds of color blind,” he said. “I know pink when I see it.”
He says he “pulled out the condom” and put it on and then they started having sex in the “missionary” position. Rose went on to say Doe let him know she had to be at work early the next day and Rose was on a “two-a-day” training regimen.
“She got up and cleaned the room a little bit and talked about having to be at work early,” he said. “I told her I wasn’t in any rush.”
But he ultimately “walked out the room after we had got done talking.”
Apparently once in their SUV headed back to Beverly Hills Rose admitted the music was blaring but they all enjoyed a laugh about the evening. Rose even called it just “a night out in L.A.”
“A night out in L.A.,” Rose went on. “Waking up in the morning, receiving a text saying she was horny…telling me to come get me from my house having sex with Randall and telling us to come into the room ‘one at a time’—yeah that’s an L.A. night.”
At no time did Doe ever stop him or say “no,” Rose said. “She seemed to enjoy it,” he added.
Rose did acknowledge after being pressed that there is nothing in the text messages spelling out affirmative consent. “She could have told me no,” he said.
Consent and Rose’s understanding of it have been a major issue in this trial. In his deposition, Rose struggled to define what constitutes consent.
“At the time I didn’t understand the context of the sentence, but I do,” he said Tuesday.
His attorney Mark Baute asked Rose to define consent and Rose complied saying: “consent to have sex [means] both parties have to agree.”
Baute continued to certify Rose was “being set up” and then painted a character portrait of the hoops star, how he was reared by his mother Brenda and that he was no rapist. That he knew how to treat a woman right. That he was taught to “be polite” and “be patient” and even “to make sure you walk on the inside when you’re on a sidewalk” and always “hold the door.”
The accuser’s attorney, McCoy, had called Rose a perjurer on a host of instances while he sat on the witness stand, apparently seeking to undermine the portrait of Rose as a nice mother’s boy.
“About these manners and I’m sure your mom has taught you all these manners,” McCoy said.
“Was that a joke?” an irate Rose shot back. “Don’t talk about my mom like that, bro.”
Rose’s lawyers have requested U.S. District Court Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald declare a mistrial after they claim the plaintiff’s attorneys intentionally withheld three text messages they say could help a jury of six women and two men consider the potential that the encounter was consensual.
Rose’s attorney announced in open court before the jury was brought in that the trio of texts are the “most exculpatory evidence” in which the accuser allegedly requested payment for a sex belt and a cab ride from that evening totalling $269.
When McCoy tried to counter that he and his team offered all text messages the judge scolded him for mishandling all the exhibits in the case as “quite careless” and he would consider a mistrial or some other form of “curative action.”
When the court recessed and without the judge present, The Daily Beast witnessed the legal gloves coming off.
When McCoy came over to Rose’s attorney’s table to pick a picture to be used in Rose’s questioning, the baller’s bulldog attorney Mark Baute prodded him.
“Pick [a photo] and do it now,” Baute commanded.
“Don’t yell at me,” McCoy said. “You better take a chill pill.”
Baute didn’t balk: “Hurry up. Time’s a wastin.”
McCoy tried to pick multiple photos and each time Baute announced, “Derrick Rose is objecting to that.”
Fed up, McCoy could only come back with: “Excuse me! Excuse me.”
Federal court officers were summoned and they sat in the 16th floor courtroom for the remainder of the day.
