Mavs Owner Mark Cuban Denies 2011 Sexual Assault Allegation

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban on Tuesday denied an allegation of sexual assault in 2011 reported this week in Willamette Week, a Portland alt-weekly newspaper.

According to Portland Police Department documents obtained by Willamette Week, a woman ran into Cuban while out on the town with her boyfriend following a Mavericks game against the Portland Trailblazers in April 2011. The couple met Cuban at a dueling piano bar called the Barrel Room, and the boyfriend urged the woman, who isn't identified in the story, to take a photo with Cuban.

While she posed for the photo with Cuban, the woman told police, the Mavericks owner thrust his hand down the back of her jeans and down her buttocks before sticking his finger in the woman's vagina against her will.

After initially being embarrassed about what she says happened, the woman went to the police a week later. After an investigation that included Cuban passing a lie detector test, the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office declined to press charges.

Through an attorney, Cuban strongly denied the allegations in a statement to the Willamette Week.

"These allegations are thoroughly investigated by the Multnomah County District's Attorney's Office and the Portland Police Bureau," Cuban's attorney Stephen Houze said. "According to the detailed prosecution decline memo, investigators interviewed the complainant's boyfriend and female friend, as well as employees and patrons of the bar, and other persons with Mr. Cuban and no one observed any inappropriate behavior by Mr. Cuban. This incident never happened and her accusations are false."

When police contacted Cuban to discuss the women's allegations seven years ago, Cuban's reaction was considerably less measured.

"Oh! Hell no! You don't think a hundred people would've noticed?" he said in response to a Portland police detective telling him what he was accused of, according to a police transcript. "How would I get, I mean, she wouldn't say something right there and then and smack the shit out of me? And while we're … oh hell no. [laughs] Are you kidding me?"

Later, Cuban lamented the he-said/she-said nature of the allegations.

"If she told five friends right there and then, then that's what they're gonna tell the judge and I'm gonna be fucked," Cuban said. "Oh my God, I don't know what to do."

In addition to the polygraph test, Cuban's claims that he didn't assault the woman were buoyed by two George Washington University medical school urologists who gave Portland police an opinion indicating Cuban couldn't have committed the crime.

"[Cuban] is a large male with large hands, making penetration without lubrication of the woman in the standing position virtually impossible," the doctors wrote.