As human beings, we all make mistakes from time to time. Of course, most of the mistakes we make in our lives are during our teenage years, when our naivety often leads to youthful indiscretions and blunders. That’s at least what happened to Dallas Mavericks rookie point guard Dennis Smith Jr. on social media.
Shortly after Smith Jr. was drafted with the No. 9 overall pick by the Mavs, many of the rookie’s old tweets began to be re-circulated in the greater Twitter-sphere. Smith is just 19 years old so he is still a teenager but some of his tweets from when he was between the ages of 13-16 were in the immortal words of Larry David, pretty, pretty, pretty bad.
One of Smith’s tweets even hyped up his own sexual prowess, which is definitely quite hilarious. But it also is one 84 character tweet that the Mavs rookie likely regrets now that he’s a professional basketball player.
The Mavs, Smith’s employer, were well aware of his immature tweets, which is why almost immediately after Dallas drafted him, team owner Mark Cuban told the rookie guard to scrub his social media account clean.
From Cuban’s appearance on ESPN during Las Vegas Summer League on Sunday (transcribed by FTW’s Andrew Joseph):
“Always aware of what’s going on around you. 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.”
With his professionalism and also his bro-like attitude, Cuban was likely the perfect person to tell Smith to delete his old tweets. Plus Cuban is Smith’s boss, so the rookie essentially had to listen. But overall, Cuban’s ability to make fun of Smith in a teachable moment will likely help the Mavs rookie not make the same type of mistakes in the future.
