Mavericks’ latest Instagram blow is deleting a post after Anthony Davis corrected his All-Star nods

It’s been a rough few days for the Dallas Mavericks on Instagram. First, they limited comments on their goodbye post to Luka Dončić after Saturday’s shocking trade that saw him sent to the Los Angeles Lakers largely for Anthony Davis. They then lost more than 700,000 followers on the platform in the wake of that trade.

And that got worse Tuesday. There, the Mavericks tried to put up a post celebrating Davis (one of several they posted). But in this particular post on his resume, they said he had nine All-Star selections when he’s recorded 10, got corrected by him in the comments, and deleted the post. Here’s what it looked like before that deletion:

The mistake here is quite understandable, and even is correct under one interpretation. Davis has, in fact, only played in nine All-Star Games at this point. But his selection to next Sunday’s ASG, the 10th of his career, has been already announced, so he’s not wrong either to say he’s a 10-time All-Star.

The more amusing element of this may be the Mavericks deleting it. A reply of “Our mistake! Of course, next week’s game will be your tenth” or something might have made some more sense. But there’s a tradeoff there, too; leaving this up would have led to more dunks on it, even with that kind of update or correction. But now there’s some ammunition for critics not just for the initial post, but for their handling of Davis’ response to it.

And, as noted, it’s been a rough week for the Mavericks’ social team. A lot of that is fully out of their control; they’re not the ones who made this heavily–panned trade, and the massive follower drop (from more than 5.3 million before the trade to 4.6 million as of Tuesday night) is probably more from fans protesting the team (which we’ve seen in other ways as well) than anything the social team has done. And the move to limit comments is somewhat understandable as well considering the way that comments section was going (which, again, isn’t about the social team).

But the omission of this 10th All-Star nod for Davis, which would have strengthened this post celebrating his resume (which really isn’t the issue here: the six-year age gap between him and Dončić is the larger problem), was entertaining. And it was especially so considering his response and their reaction to then delete the post.