Mavericks Owner Mark Cuban told rookie G Dennis Smith Jr. to remove some questionable tweets from his Twitter account after the team drafted him last month. Cuban yesterday talked to ESPN's Mike Breen about the move, saying after Smith was drafted, Cuban "talked to him on the phone (and) I’m like, ‘Dude, I went through your Twitter account. It’s time to get on there and delete.’ So he went through and, to his credit, they were gone. He had a lot of stupid stuff on there.” Cuban said social media "has been very responsible for players coming up being more responsible because they’re always under a microscope." He said, "There’s always a camera somewhere. They know they’re being watched and followed on social media, they have followings. That’s really helped us quite a bit, not just from a marketing perspective, but from a personal responsibility perspective.” Breen noted, “You're investing so much money in these young players. Character is so important right now. It kind of conditions them to be aware” (“NBA Summer League," ESPN, 7/9). USATODAY.com's Andrew Joseph wrote it is "almost surprising that NBA prospects don’t preemptively delete their old tweets" at this point. If there is "anything regrettable on the account, NBA Twitter will find it" (USATODAY.com, 7/9). THE COMEBACK's Andrew Bucholtz wrote 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." Cuban "doesn’t look particularly bad in this case, as this is more helpful than censorship." Bucholtz: "But 'Owner tells player to delete tweets' could be much more problematic in other cases" (THECOMEBACK.com, 7/9).
