How a potato, an NBA legend and a reality TV show came together for one weird tweet

Just before noon on Wednesday, NBA star and Hall of Famer Dirk Nowitzki sent out a very odd tweet: a photo of a potato with his image pasted onto it.

Nowitzki, who joined the elite 30,000-point club on March 8, has received plenty of awards and praise over the course of his career, taking home an NBA championship, an MVP honor and 13 All-Star accolades. But all the same, that potato stands out as one of the oddest gifts he’s ever received. And immediately on social media, people began to wonder who sent it.

The answer, as it turns out, is less about a weird, dedicated fan of Nowitzki’s and more about a weird start-up company intent on trolling one of Nowitzki’s friends.

In October 2016, two young businessmen, Alex Craig and Riad Bekhit, appeared on “Shark Tank,” the wildly popular reality television program where entrepreneurs pitch business ideas to business moguls in hopes of raising funds. Craig and Bekhit’s pitch was simple: a potato delivery system.

More specifically, the pair proposed a service where customers could go to a website, order a potato and have it sent to someone with a custom message inscribed on it. For your average, run-of-the-mill potato and message, the service costs $9.99.

One of the moguls listening to Craig and Bekhit’s pitch in that episode was outspoken billionaire Mark Cuban, who called the idea “stupid on a stick,” per USA Today. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he decided not to invest in the duo’s young company, Potato Parcel.

But Potato Parcel did get an investment that day from one of Cuban’s co-stars, Kevin O’Leary, and despite Cuban’s harsh critique of the idea, the company has continued to operate.

Which brings us back to Dirk Nowitzki, who plays for the Dallas Mavericks, a team Mark Cuban just so happens to own. What’s more, Nowitzki and Cuban are close after working together for 17 years, so much so that Cuban has paid Nowitzki more than he asked for, forced a website to take a critical tweet of Nowitzki down and was there for him “when I needed a friend,” Nowitzki once said.

On Twitter, Potato Parcel was quick to own up to sending the tater, which the company said was a gesture of good will meant to honor Nowitzki’s career.

Indeed, Potato Parcel’s name is just visible in the upper-left hand corner of the packing slip in Nowitzki’s photo. And while the spud was clearly meant in good fun, fans still appreciated the subtle shade Craig and Bekhit managed to throw at the owner who once turned them down and one of his friends.

This story was originally published March 15, 2017 at 10:42 PM with the headline "How a potato, an NBA legend and a reality TV show came together for one weird tweet."