Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban told draft pick Dennis Smith Jr. to delete his old tweets

Numerous draft picks have created some controversy with their old tweets, from Mitchell Trubisky’s NSFW ones to Christian McCaffrey talking about his bodily functions. NC State point guard Dennis Smith Jr. fell into that trap during this year’s NBA draft, with media finding tweets about him “slanging this wood in my pants,” among other things:

https://twitter.com/Thomburger/status/878097535558008832

After he was taken ninth overall by the Dallas Mavericks, though, Smith quickly deleted the wood tweet, and it turns out Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban is the reason why. Cuban (seen at center above) relayed the story when appearing on ESPN’s broadcast of the Mavericks-Suns Summer League game Sunday:

“And you know, one of the first things after we drafted Dennis, and I’m talking to him on the phone, I’m like, ‘Dude, I went through your Twitter account. It’s time to get on there and delete.’ And so, he went through it. And to his credit, they were gone. He had a lot of stupid stuff on there.”

Yeah, deleting those tweets probably was the right call, but an owner telling a player what to tweet or not isn’t necessarily the best look either, especially when it’s one with Cuban’s history of trying to censor news outlets. He doesn’t look particularly bad in this case, as this is more helpful than censorship, but “Owner tells player to delete tweets” could be much more problematic in other cases. Hopefully Cuban won’t try and take this too far.

[Ben Koo on Clippit]