The NBA and the Sacramento Kings have launched a joint investigation of newly hired head coach Luke Walton after a former sports reporter filed a civil suit accusing Walton of sexual assault, dating back to a 2014 incident when Walton was an assistant coach for the Golden State Warriors. As we await more facts to be known in what’s looking like a classic “he said, she said” case, both sides have come out firing, with Walton’s defense team employing familiar tactics of publicly discrediting the accuser while simultaneously imploring the media not to try this case in public.

In a statement Tuesday morning, Mark Baute, Walton’s attorney, called the accuser “an opportunist, not a victim” and vowed to “prove this in a courtroom”. After the woman held a press conference to detail the accusations, Baute doubled down on this strategy. “Yesterday’s press conference was a poorly staged attempt to portray the accuser as a viable spokesperson for an important movement,” Baute said in a statement on Wednesday. “Her lawyers want to create a public circus to distract from their complete lack of evidence to support their outrageous claims.”

Labelling accusers as “opportunists” is nothing new, especially when the people they’re accusing are rich and famous, making it viable to sell the narrative that the accuser is only out for money and headlines. This particular instance, however, features a new twist on an old tactic – Baute is heavily implying that the accuser is looking to capitalize on the groundswell of support for sexual assault victims to come out of the #MeToo movement, which has inspired hundreds of women and men to publicly come forth as survivors, often years after their assaults occurred.

But as #MeToo has created solidarity for survivors, it’s also provided cover to those looking to excuse or dismiss assault accusations, particularly those against likable public figures. #MeToo backlash has morphed into a movement of its own, with some men saying they’re now afraid to be alone in a room with a female colleague for fear they might be accused of something with no witnesses to dispel such claims. If such cases have often come down to “he said, she said,” some apparently think that “she” always wins in a post-#MeToo world.

The perception belies the reality. According to the Economist, since #MeToo gained steam, the proportion of people who think that false accusations of sexual assault are a bigger problem than unreported or unpunished assaults has grown from 13% to 18%. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 63% of sexual assaults go unreported, while between 2% and 10% of reported assaults are false accusations.

#MeToo backlash has thus provided defense attorneys like Baute yet another avenue to further the myth that women have some broad agenda to tear down powerful men by falsely accusing them of assault. Baute is no stranger to the use of such tactics in defense of sports stars – he’s perhaps most well-known for successfully defending former Chicago Bulls star Derrick Rose against gang rape accusations in a civil trial that many critics say hinged on underhanded tactics of slut-shaming and intimidating the accuser. In a 2016 interview with the Guardian, Baute boasted of his ability to “break a witness” and accused the woman of shedding “crocodile tears” on the stand – “pretty easy to fake if you’re looking for 20m bucks”. During the trial, he said the accuser welcomed the men she said attacked her “with open arms and open legs”, attempted to out her identity, and pointed to provocative photos from her Instagram account to discredit her.

Last January, Baute was hired to represent former NFL and National Rugby League player Jarryd Hayne against a 2015 rape accusation dating back to his days with the San Francisco 49ers. The Australian athlete’s trial is set to begin January 2020.

Despite Baute’s statements, Walton’s accuser never mentioned #MeToo directly in her press conference, nor did she attempt to position herself as a “spokesperson” for the movement. Before the press conference, her attorney released a written statement placing the assault accusation in the broader context of what he characterizes as a pattern of abuse in the NBA.

“Women connected to the National Basketball Association (NBA) have long had to suffer in silence through the indignities of gender abuse and sexual exploitation at the hands of famous, wealthy and powerful men,” attorney Garo Mardirossian wrote. “Aided by their fame, money and power, and motivated by a culture that tolerates misogynistic gender-bias, too many men in professional basketball inappropriately abuse women.”

We should be careful not to let the high-profile nature of assault cases involving athletes skew our assessment of sports leagues as breeding grounds for abusers. It’s certainly true that teams and leagues have historically provided protections for men accused of violence, while drumming up public support from fans quick to jump to the defense of their favorite players. But the fact remains that athletes are arrested at a lower rate than the general public. The prevalence of violence against women isn’t a sports issue, but a societal one.

Still, for a league that prides itself on being the most progressive of the four major men’s North American sports leagues, particularly when it comes to gender hiring and practices, it behooves the NBA and the Kings to thoroughly and transparently investigate the accusations against Walton. In a joint statement Thursday, the Kings announced they has retained attorneys Sue Ann Van Dermyden and Jennifer Doughty to lead the independent investigation, while the NBA’s team will be led by Elizabeth Maringer, who serves as the league’s senior vice president and assistant general counsel, integrity and investigations. It’s notable that the investigation will be led by women, though that shouldn’t automatically instill complacency in the effectiveness of the inquiry, especially given the NFL’s failure to act on the suggestions made by the women hired to lead the league’s domestic violence task force.

As with every accusation, we should reserve judgment until we know more about the details of this case. And that applies equally to Walton as it should to his accuser, regardless of how an opportunistic defense attorney might paint her in the light of a growing backlash against sexual assault accusations.