Chicago Bulls All-Star guard Derrick Rose has finally met a defense his team can’t score on.
The tough opponent isn’t the Miami Heat or San Antonio Spurs but a small Chicago-area church that is putting new pressure on the superstar NBA player over attempts by Adidas, the $18 billion sporting-goods giant whose shoes Rose endorses, to step all over its “Add a Zero” trademark.
The Christian Faith Fellowship Church — which sells shirts and caps with the slogan from its small church store to help fund a food pantry — is pushing back against Adidas and its “adizero” line of lightweight sporting goods.
The church, in Zion, Ill. — about halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee — has targeted Rose as a potential witness in an upcoming trial over the trademark, The Post has learned.
Rose, whose 14-year, $250 million endorsement deal with Adidas is one of the richest in sports, hasn’t weighed in publicly on the Windy City spat — despite being asked to 19 months ago by James Logan, the church’s pastor.
Now, Rose, who grew up on the city’s tough South Side and is a local hero, might be forced to pick sides.
The trademark trial was set recently after the US Patent and Trademark Office last month rejected a request by Adidas, which rang up profits of $1 billion last year on sales of $19.3 billion, to throw out the church’s “Add a Zero” mark in favor of its own application for adizero to be trademarked.
Earlier, Adidas offered Pastor Logan $5,000 — about the cost of 31 pairs of D Rose 3.5 basketball shoes — to give up the mark. He refused the paltry sum.
The trial will start next month, according to Richard Young, a lawyer for the church. Rose, 24, could be called to testify in August, he said.
“We didn’t want to spend the money, but now that it’s going to trial the church is seriously considering deposing Rose,” said Young, a lawyer with Quarles Brady, a Milwaukee law firm.
He said he would like to ask Rose why he wants “to steal a trademark of a small church of parishioners of modest means in Zion, Ill.”
The church’s “Add a Zero” trademark is aimed at encouraging parishioners to grow their weekly donations by adding a zero to the total. The church registered its mark three years before Adidas moved to trademark its adizero brand.
While the Adidas spat with the church may seem minor, its lightweight adizero line has been fast-growing and is now the centerpiece of the company’s shoe line in soccer, basketball, running, baseball, football, track and golf.
Ironically, in its 2012 annual report, Adidas uses a quote from its legendary founder, Adi Dassler, to inspire employees and investors. “Lead, don’t copy,” the quote reads.
Neither Rose’s agent nor a lawyer for Adidas returned a request for comment on the trial or whether the company might add a zero or two to the $5,000 settlement offer.