Mark Cuban made a dumb joke about Thon Maker’s age during a TV broadcast

Here’s Mark Cuban joking that Thon Maker is a pretty good player “for a 40-year-old” during NBA Summer League in Vegas:

I dunno, man. “Lol Thon Maker is older than he says he is,” is a joke I see all the time, and it does take root in some real thinking. Maker, who is listed at 19 years old and came to the NBA straight from high school via loophole, reportedly fell off some teams’ draft boards because they suspected he was older than 19. Those rumors spiraled into some Reddit research that’s proooobably bullshit, and now they seep into every conversation you see about the guy on the internet.

So yeah, the jokes don’t come from nowhere, but we do know why this is even a feasible notion, right? Maker was born in what is now South Sudan in the middle of the Second Sudanese Civil War. His family fled the region in the early 2000s, taking refuge in Uganda before settling in Australia, where Maker honed his game. It’s tough to pin down a birth certificate for someone born in a war-torn country.

Whatever team executives may believe about Maker’s age, they must realize there’s a legitimate reason for the confusion. And one would think they’d know better than to crack wise about something so unfounded and so important to a prospect’s reputation on national TV. But I guess Mark Cuban has nothing better to do, since he traded his chance of drafting Maker for half a season of Rajon Rondo.

Maker’s not listening, anyway:

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