Mark Cuban posted an internet apology this morning on Blogmaverick.com for the uncouth comments directed at Kenyon Martin’s mom he made earlier in the week, which he says “started as a smart ass comment that I know that no one heard. How do I know, because there was a reporter right there next to me, as well as other people who saw the whole thing and didnt hear a word of it.”

Yesterday, in another fleeting moment of misjudgment, he posted on twitter what he calls one of many examples of abusive messages he receives regularly. It isn’t pretty.

If Mark’s goal was to make people feel bad for him with this little stunt, well, it worked. A quick twitter search for “@mcuban” revealed several pages worth of mostly sympathetic messages from Cuban’s followers telling him to buck up (and of course, wanting to know who sent this; Cuban chose not to include the twitter handle of the sender). I’ll admit at first I too was more interested in how the NBA or Twitter might react, predicting that an apology might follow from the latter. Upon further consideration, I believe Cuban was out of line and this message should have never seen the light of day.

It’s a question of digital responsibility. Mark Cuban has roughly 39,000 followers on twitter, putting him in the top-200 users in the World. He has been revered for his use of the platform, specifically, his efforts to reply to people’s messages and interact with the community. With that type of reach and influence, it’s unquestionably necessary that you proceed with caution and watch what you say. And in the case of something scathing like this, assume a certain degree of your audience is not sophisticated enough to understand exactly what you’re trying to convey. Even some people who use twitter obsessively were confused by the tweet because he deleted the ID of the sender - at first glance it foolishly looks like @mcuban calling @mcuban the N word.

Like he initially thought when the reporter standing next to him didn’t run with (or according to Cuban even hear) the K-Mart comments, Cuban may believe that he gets a free pass here as well because he deleted the offensive tweet before it could be seen by too many people - of course, the search results say otherwise. However, if Cuban can man up and apologize for something he believes no one heard, then maybe he can do the same for something that multiple pages of @ replies, blog posts, and comments indicate happened in plain site.