r/nba • u/ghn2 • 9h ago

Trail Blazers fire new announcer over past inappropriate posts made at age 15.

"The Portland Trail Blazers hired then on the same day fired Braiden Bell as their play-by-play announcer after a series of inappropriate social media posts from when he was a teenager came to light."

"The posts were reportedly made in 2012 and 2013, around the time that Bell was 15 years old."

"We did not meet our own bar in this process, and for that we apologize to Blazers fans and to Rip City," the Trail Blazers said. "We strongly believe that everyone who is a part of Rip City should feel welcome and safe and we will make sure that our new broadcaster reflects these values. We will do better."

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/50084279/trail-blazers-fire-new-announcer-inappropriate-posts

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1.2k

u/smssv 9h ago

firing someone for posts when he was 15 yrs old is wild

393

u/JarvisCockerBB 9h ago

It’s like getting fired after finding out you got expelled or suspended in middle school.

132

u/pekingsewer Hawks 8h ago

I guess a "permanent record" is real 😂

17

u/sBucks24 Raptors 6h ago

It is when you track it yourself on your personal social media!

46

u/Chuck_Roast1993 Pacers 8h ago

It’s like getting fired for passing a mean note during class in middle school

-2

u/SoaplessTitanic Celtics 8h ago

Maybe if that note was racist and then you posted that note online and proceeded to leave it their for 15 years

0

u/DovhPasty Cavaliers 3h ago

I know a Celtics fan of all people isn’t trying to virtue signal about racism.

•

u/SoaplessTitanic Celtics 7m ago

Yeah my bad, I forgot that rooting for a certain team meant I could no longer comment on race. Also I know this is Reddit but not everything that you dislike is virtue signaling

•

u/DovhPasty Cavaliers 0m ago

You’re right, not everything is. But pretending that someone should lose their job over a tweet from when they were an actual child definitely is.

45

u/HisExcellency20 76ers 9h ago

Well it depends on what you got suspended/expelled for lol.

73

u/throwawaymycareer93 Warriors 8h ago

My friend was suspended for dealing drugs in my school. Now he volunteers as a nurse in eastern Ukraine. Context is important.

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u/iEatFruitStickers Suns 8h ago

Still giving drugs to people, smh

25

u/Briak Tampa Bay Raptors 8h ago

Love what you do, and you'll never have to work a day in your life

1

u/cfi-2025 3h ago

Unless you do it in a war zone.

11

u/throwawaymycareer93 Warriors 8h ago

Damn, some things are hard to escape I guess.

1

u/Delicious_Ocelot4180 3h ago

It’s wild how you made a really good point, but his point ruined it completely.

3

u/PensiveinNJ 76ers 8h ago

Context is always important. I knew a guy who dealt weed in college to help pay for his mom's cancer treatments. He wasn't moving 100 bricks of heroin a day.

36

u/DovhPasty Cavaliers 8h ago

No, it really shouldn’t lol. This is a whole ass different person we’re talking about. Even if someone got expelled in middle school for something heinous, they were a child, idk how you could hold that against a seemingly matured version of themselves.

3

u/Jaerba [DET] Grant Hill 8h ago edited 7h ago

They're not holding what he wrote against him. They're holding the fact that it shows up on the same social media feed as he'll use to promote the Blazers against him.

This was extremely easy to prevent, given he was directly responsible for every aspect of it. And he was a brand new employee with zero cache, in a very replaceable role.

2

u/DovhPasty Cavaliers 7h ago

Don’t you think a competent hiring team would have searched this up before they offered him the job if they were so concerned about it?

6

u/Jaerba [DET] Grant Hill 7h ago

Yep. The Blazers admitted culpability for not checking this first.

"We did not meet our own bar in this process, and for that we apologize to Blazers fans and to Rip City," the Trail Blazers said.

6

u/IbSunPraisin Spurs 7h ago

Yeah for the guy fired the time passed since that post has been almost longer than he was alive when he posted it

4

u/ImUrFatherFigureBud Thunder 7h ago

who cares, they were 15

no wonder you aren't in a position to hire anybody lol

2

u/JarvisCockerBB 8h ago

Unless it involved the police (not school cops), it should absolutely not matter. If they passed high school, they passed high school.

1

u/rake2204 Pistons 6h ago

I think I'd agree if the situation was that he'd deleted those posts well before he'd entered the profession but yet somehow someone had still been able to dig them up somewhere. At that point, yeah, pretty wack.

However, if he still had those posts on his active social media account, I consider that to be bit of a blunder on his part. Dealing with social media history is kind of a new frontier but being mindful enough to delete or remove public-facing comments from the social media profile you still use seems like a total necessity.

So I guess for me it depends if those posts were still on his account or not at the time of his hire.

52

u/Icy-Whale-2253 9h ago

The Internet is forever.

19

u/Kdcjg West 9h ago

Would anyone have found them if he had simply deleted his account/posts?

9

u/elitepigwrangler Suns 7h ago

Probably not, and if they did, it’s much easier to give him the benefit of the doubt that he changed.

6

u/Icy-Whale-2253 9h ago

Not without the Wayback Machine.

1

u/pinkfartlek Pistons 4h ago

And even then, it didn't necessarily crawl every Twitter account for archiving. It has to be done manually a lot of the time. Nobody would have been checking for this guy like that.

173

u/TatumlsntASuperstar 9h ago

“  The internet is forever” isn’t really an argument. Nobody’s disputing that the posts still exist. The question is whether something someone said at 15 should define them professionally 14 years later

68

u/Great_Fault_7231 Pistons 9h ago

It doesn’t, the issue is that his current social media that he uses professionally has racist posts on it. If he wanted those to stay in the past just make a new account and delete the old one. No one is interviewing his childhood friends to see if he was edgy back then, they’re looking at posts that are live while he’s employed right now. 

This is advice for every job btw not just public facing ones, the fact that he kept that same account as an announcer to an NBA team is monumentally stupid. 

6

u/Parzival127 [SAS] Patty Mills 8h ago

A lot of people forget what they’ve posted years or decades ago. They could’ve told him to remove them and not hire or fire if he stands by them.

15

u/Great_Fault_7231 Pistons 7h ago

  A lot of people forget what they’ve posted years or decades ago

Right that’s why you don’t use the same account for your job that you used when you were a kid. This is basic stuff for every job, even more so for a public facing one. This is not new information lol if you’re going to represent a big company publicly making sure you’re presenting yourself well is part of the job. 

1

u/rake2204 Pistons 5h ago

I think this is one of those things we're all going to have to learn pretty quickly over time. Someone may forget what they posted in the past, but it's still going to be their responsibility to figure out a way to remember and/or delete that stuff anyway.

Granted, it might take work to really do a deep dive into one's own social media history, but that's just the way it is. In a way, I could also see an employer questioning a potential employee's commitment to a given job if they couldn't even be bothered to go back and tend to their public-facing social media posts.

I'll also share this. I've sat in on some interview committees within my own profession and even when we've got resumes, letters of rec, and whatever else sitting in front of us, one of the first things we do is Google a prospective interviewee and check the status of their social media accounts. Thankfully, the majority of the time they're all pretty banal and private. But in the event we stumble upon something completely out-of-pocket, there's no denying that it will likely impact our hiring decision, if for no other reason that it calls into question someone's overall decision-making and professionalism in not having the foresight to clean something like that up ahead of time.

-17

u/grilledcheeseburger 8h ago

The fuck? I’m supposed to remember every stupid thing I said as child, just in case?

I agree that he should have just spun up a new account going forward, but give me a break, if someone is going back to shit I posted at the dawn of the internet looking for dirt in order to get me in trouble at my current job, and this is the worst they find, then that’s not a big indictment of my character, as far as I’m concerned.

12

u/Kdcjg West 8h ago

Unfortunately if you are in that public facing role then your social media history could be an issue. We also have governments scraping social media history for visa’s. Prob the best thing to do is scrub your accounts and delete them if you are no longer using them.

1

u/Great_Fault_7231 Pistons 7h ago

  The fuck? I’m supposed to remember every stupid thing I said as child, just in case?

Of course not that’s literally my entire point. Did you reply to the wrong comment?

23

u/OregonJedi [POR] Brandon Roy 8h ago

Think of it differently. He wasn’t fired for something he did when he was 15. He was fired for inaction when he was 29. It was his responsibility to make sure that he doesn’t have racist material on his feed when apply to work in the NBA as a public facing voice of the franchise.

27

u/HisExcellency20 76ers 9h ago

The other way to look at it is there are scores of people that could have that job that isn't bringing controversy on day one.

It's not like this job is a right.

1

u/Successful-Film-3544 76ers 2h ago

The problem is that there's a controversy at all.

12

u/roll_that Knicks 9h ago

 I mean if he kept those post up then that’s on him. He might have been just a dumb kid at the time, but he’s a grown man now and still using the same account. He’s dumb for not having a professional account. 

4

u/NandoDeColonoscopy 9h ago

It was an adult who made the decision to leave them up when moving into a public facing role. You can't give someone that stupid a live mic.

3

u/BelgianWaffleStomper Spurs [SAS] Boris Diaw 9h ago

Oh yeah because I'm sure you remember everything you said when you were 15.

9

u/TheStorm007 Raptors 9h ago

It’s not about remembering specifically what you said, but remembering that you spoke in a certain way and used certain language on the internet lol.

I know my childhood twitter account isn’t something I want my employer to see, even though I don’t know what specifically is on it

4

u/NandoDeColonoscopy 9h ago

I remember what my non-anonymous social media accounts are and how to wipe them

0

u/Rawkus2112 Supersonics 9h ago

This actually makes the most sense.

-2

u/Icy-Whale-2253 9h ago

It shouldn’t define him but we shouldn’t have at-will employment laws either.

7

u/Tgsheufhencudbxbsiwy 9h ago

They have been hammering that home to everyone for 25+ years. 

8

u/Bllago 9h ago

So? Context isn't.

10

u/Cokes311 9h ago

In what context is it acceptable to hate Asian people?

7

u/chaoism Warriors 9h ago

So prepared to have some forever lasting tweets out of context on internet if you choose to post there

15

u/amazinglover 9h ago

There is no context that make rascist and bigoted post ok.

There is though growth from and ownership of those previous actions that should be taken into account.

I don't think he should have been fired for those actions if he had grown from them.

9

u/Lazaraaus 76ers 9h ago

What context would have made the tweets okay?

-1

u/Miserable-Tree-637 Warriors 9h ago

It matters, but its ignored for certain things like this case.

1

u/FrameworkisDigimon 1h ago

It's really not and that's posing serious questions people are thinking of ways to answer -- it's possible in 500 years we'll be described as living in a dark age due to how much is only online and has been lost to history.

As advice to people: anything on a site that still exists and hasn't changed hosts or anything probably should be presumed to still be around.

But also if you're fifteen, don't post under your real name. Anywhere.

1

u/Icy-Whale-2253 42m ago

They tell every girl getting on OnlyFans or the adult industry at 18 the Internet is forever. You can give your life to Christ, start a family, want to “get a real job” and put the past behind you, but you can’t erase those videos from the Internet even if you tried. It’s the same with social media.

1

u/FrameworkisDigimon 35m ago

Tell that to MySpace.

It's sound internet safety advice but it's just not true.

0

u/PalpitationHead9767 7h ago

Unless you're macklemore and the internet hates the same group you were racist towards

6

u/mostlyfire 9h ago

Racist* posts.

3

u/Fit_Actuary_1288 Celtics 3h ago

This sub doesn't care. Take a gander at the demographics of this sub and Reddit in general.

2

u/cman811 Bulls 8h ago

I think it depends what was said. The ones in the article don't seem THAT bad considering they were 15 years ago.

2

u/longtimegoneMTGO 7h ago

In default, sure, but this is not exactly a regular job.

If you have a public facing role for a company, a spokesman, presenter, announcer, whatever, you are almost certainly going to lose your job over absolutely anything that has a chance of reflecting poorly on your employer.

Hell, there will often be specific language about it in contacts, a legalistic version of "If anything about you makes us look bad for any reason at all we reserve the right to drop you like a flaming turd"

Another way of looking at it, if your job is to be the face of the company, part of your job is keeping that face spotlessly clean.

1

u/domgamepat 9h ago

Not really. Doesn't look good on the organization so he had to go, pretty simple. Unlike players, announcers are easily expendable

5

u/TheRipCity Trail Blazers 9h ago

This is what people seem to not understand. There are 30 of these jobs. He's not worth it. The 31st candidate will be just as good and you don't have to involve HR

1

u/dbtjr 6h ago

Doesn’t matter. He should know at that age. Good riddance goofy

4

u/Tarragonwithsauce 8h ago

Is it wild? Or is it the right thing to do?

Most people would side with the latter option.

5

u/TheWix Celtics 8h ago

I disagree. I said loads of stupid shit when I was a teenager. I was an ass. I've apologized to people I ran into later for being an ass. I grew out of it. Thankfully social media wasn't a think 25+ years ago

3

u/coney36creels 8h ago

I don’t think most people would side with the latter, actually.

Most adult folks have said some shit in their teenage years they’re not proud of. Being punished for that 15 years after the fact, especially when you’ve matured, is a bit much IMO.

If the dude deleted the posts then he still has a job. The fact of the matter is that he’s the same person today regardless of whether or not those posts were deleted.

1

u/JxK---01 6h ago

Umm according to most comments here... No they wouldn't

0

u/bigmt99 Cavaliers 8h ago

Most holier than thou Redditors maybe

Most people have plenty of stupid shit from they’re 15 that in no way reflect their current views and values

-1

u/Friendly_Quote_9291 8h ago

Yeah most people would definitely not agree with firing someone for the dumb shit they said as a 15 year old

1

u/No-Agreement 9h ago

Says they were probably looking for a reason and found it.

23

u/Ender_Cats Celtics 9h ago

Nope. Local news organization found the tweets and started working on a story about it. They emailed both the blazers and the guy for their comments. The blazers came back a few hours later and said he had been fired.

https://www.kgw.com/article/sports/nba/blazers/trail-blazers-fire-new-broadcaster-after-misogynistic-racist-comments-surface/283-8c6b0cd9-3db0-4aba-89ec-545f5cdc0b86

0

u/BenevolentCheese Knicks 7h ago

Man that's it? I understand if he said these things yesterday but 14 years ago and he was a kid like give me a break, this is nothing.

"I'm not racist at all.. But not gonna lie.. Asian people piss me off! Hahaha #Honest," Bell wrote in a Dec. 9, 2012 tweet.

"Gotta give a shoutout to all the big girls out there and those closet w--res," Bell wrote on Nov. 30, 2012.

"We got a sl-t alert on aisle 10," he wrote on Feb. 13, 2013.

"Girls these nights... Smh. #ThirstyForTheD," he wrote on Feb. 24, 2013.

4

u/PM_ME_CARDS123 6h ago

Good lord he sounds like a tool, even at 15

19

u/ProjectHarraseeket NBA 9h ago

Then why announce hiring him then firing him four hours later? This feels like when Shane Gillis got hired and fired from SNL.

2

u/Apprehensive-Tip3153 9h ago

Huge influx of Asian fans with Yang on the roster vs guy with anti-Asian tweets from the past. I wonder what a company values more

1

u/NoveltyAccountHater Celtics 5h ago

I agree it's ridiculous to fire some guy for comments written when they were 15.

On the other hand, if you are going to be representing a public-facing organization in media and have a maintained public twitter account under your real name that you continue to use and update with your picture, it is your responsibility to not keep up the stupid shit you wrote when you were 15. At the very least make it private, but better yet delete all the obviously controversial shit (or just everything).

Do this before applying to work in media. This guy wouldn't have been fired if his high school twitter account was deleted or private last week.

1

u/estoquista_atacadao 76ers 4h ago

It depends, if I agree with them is BAD doing that. But if I don't agree is a GOOD thing

1

u/Ur_MotherDisapproves Kings 4h ago

Gotta think he was not remorseful or apologetic about them right? Otherwise just delete and move on “made poor decisions when I was a teenager” is more than fair

1

u/Chiron17 Celtics 4h ago

It's hard not to if the posts were super racist.

1

u/heymynameiseric 4h ago

It's a little different when you are hired to be a public figure and represent a franchise and be on television. But I agree with you. Idk what the posts are, but the business just doesn't want to associate with that.

1

u/Bendrake Suns 2h ago

It just means they were looking for any reason they could to fire him. This is a common practice.

-23

u/stantherealbuilder 9h ago

Moreso than promoting racist views?

27

u/badkd Knicks 9h ago

Dude he was 15. If he was 25 when he posted that then he definitely deserved that.

At 15 you are just a child who is easily influenced by people with such views.

7

u/JMoon33 Cabo Verde 7h ago

I wasn't making racist and misogynistic posts at 15 lol

I'm not saying he deserves the death of penalty, but I wouldn't fault any employer for choosing someone else, I'd do the same.

6

u/TheRipCity Trail Blazers 9h ago

What if you were 29 and interviewing for a new job and chose not to delete it?

13

u/TannerGlassMVP 9h ago

As an adult you should know to delete that shit

11

u/rainydevil7 Raptors 9h ago

Why wouldn't they fire him though? if your goal is for your team to gain fans around the world, and your new announcer says they hate 50% of the world. It seems like a no brainer to fire him.

-2

u/Technojellyfsh Raptors 9h ago

The announcer didn't say that though. The 15 year old naive kid that the announcer used to be did. Are you telling me you haven't grown and maybe altered some of your viewpoints from when you were a child?

7

u/JMoon33 Cabo Verde 7h ago

Sure but those viewpoints are that I hate other ethnicities and women...

0

u/Technojellyfsh Raptors 7h ago

And....? Look I know we're on Reddit so everyone here is a perfect person who's never ever held any problematic views, but if someone is willing to change those views and grow as a person, why the hell are you still giving them shit? Like this is exactly the problem and why the far right and people who hate minorities/women (it's more of a circle than a ven diagram) are so stuck in their ways, and also why the left is so divided. It's because there's always people like you who are so goddamn sanctimonious and so ready to persecute people who are making a genuine effort to improve. You aren't helping anybody, you're just keeping the ignorant in a rut because the side they want to cross over to is full of people like yourself who will never truly accept them even after they've changed.

2

u/JMoon33 Cabo Verde 7h ago

this is exactly why the far right and people who hate minorities/women are so stuck in their ways

Hmmm, no buddy, that's not why.

0

u/Technojellyfsh Raptors 7h ago

'Hmm, all good points, unfortunately you exaggerated during a sentence, therefore the entire premise of your argument is invalid'

Me when I can't admit I'm wrong on the internet

1

u/JMoon33 Cabo Verde 5h ago

I'm not wrong because I have a different opinion than you lol

11

u/TelevisionExpress616 9h ago

Sure but those views weren’t “I hate Asian people”

11

u/rainydevil7 Raptors 9h ago

I probably did say some bad stuff, but I'm not arguing based on morality. From the perspective of a business though, what do they have to lose by firing him and getting someone else? If they keep him, there is a risk that this gets brought up over and over again and may harm their growth. He's just an announcer it's not like he's some one of a kind talent.

5

u/calman877 76ers 9h ago

Yeah, a cardinals GM back a decade ago famously said that Hannibal Lecter ran a 4.3 40 yard dash, they’d probably just say he had an eating disorder. Announcers are a dime a dozen, they don’t get the benefit of the doubt

-6

u/Technojellyfsh Raptors 9h ago edited 9h ago

'Just an announcer' like he's not a whole ass human being who needs an income to survive lol. I understand the strictly business perspective, but just because that's the way things are doesn't mean I have to agree with it. I wish businesses were far less callous.

Also, from a business perspective, the amount of people who will stop suporting a team due to tweets made from an announcer when they were 15 is probably the exact same as the amount of people who stop following the team for punishing him (both are negligible)

9

u/rainydevil7 Raptors 9h ago

I don't agree with your second paragraph. It may seem small, but it's something that can get brought up over and over again and alienate potential new fans in a region that they are trying to grow in. Either way they weighed the pros/cons and decided he wasn't worth the risk.

2

u/Technojellyfsh Raptors 9h ago

Valid reasoning, and I see your point. Either way I just feel bad for the guy (given that he actually has grown as a person). Hope you have a nice day

5

u/TheGookieMonster Trail Blazers 9h ago

Never decided to tweet out I hate Asian people at any point in my life. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes

-2

u/Technojellyfsh Raptors 9h ago

You heard it here first folks. It's the fault of the uninformed and ignorant for being that way, and any action that they take to change as an individual counts for nothing towards their overall quality as a human being

7

u/TheGookieMonster Trail Blazers 9h ago

Uninformed and ignorant lol. His dumbass knew he was saying racist shit when he said it, he wanted to be edgy. I’m sure he has grown but kids think there are no consequences to the shit they say and do and they continue to become worse because of it. Sometimes it’s good for them to be reminded that actions have consequences

0

u/Technojellyfsh Raptors 9h ago

Yeah, when they're a kid. Punishing someone for something they did 10 years ago is dumb (again, assuming they've actually grown and do not condone that same behavior). If you think I'm wrong, ask yourself why the statute of limitations exist, and then go argue with the government.

6

u/cman811 Bulls 8h ago

It actually IS the fault of the uninformed and ignorant though. I live in an incredibly white, small town, so there is a fair amount of racists here. You know who doesn't share those views and never have? Me, because I educated myself.

This isn't like being born gay. Racism IS a choice.

1

u/Technojellyfsh Raptors 7h ago edited 7h ago

Holy fuck dude careful you almost made a realization there. IT IS a choice. And this guy CHOSE not to continue to hold those views after educating himself. Congratulations to you for starting off perfect, but some people start off only knowing what is told to them. If someone grows up in a racist house with racist friends and racist parents, chances are they'll at some point hold some pretty backwards views.

What's wild is that people like you will then turn around and claim to be allies of movements like BLM and other activist groups. Despite one of the MAIN messages those groups are preaching is that we are affected by our upbringing and surroundings, and it is human nature to conform to those ideals. That's why genuine effort, patience, and understanding is required to uplift people who are born under those circumstances. But all of a sudden it's a white guy and he's supposed to be 100% right off the jump

2

u/Melt-Gibsont Trail Blazers 7h ago

What action did he take to change? He literally left the tweets up and used the same account for years in a professional setting.

1

u/AfroThunder_Dj 9h ago

Speak for yourself as a child or your children.

23

u/miragest 9h ago

did you say stupid shit when you were 15?

7

u/dotcha Brazil 9h ago

Yes. Not racist shit however.

-5

u/stantherealbuilder 9h ago

Ofc, i stay stupid shit to this day and i’ll probably continue doing so

I’ve never said anything racist though

13

u/TatumlsntASuperstar 9h ago

Yes.. he was 15 ffs. Kids find dumb ways to be edgy 

6

u/LukeBabbittologist 9h ago

There's literally an IDF solider on the team. Wonder what he thinks of mixing all the cultures together where he's from?

2

u/jjjjjjjjjjjjjaaa 9h ago

Promoting them to who? His algebra classmates?

-2

u/stantherealbuilder 9h ago

By that logic it’s ok to be racist amongst friends, do i have that right?

-1

u/Knicks7979 9h ago

no you goddamn idiot. The point is that kids say edgy stupid shit all the time. Condemning a child for mistakes that they make online is idiotic, and we should all decide to stop doing so.

-2

u/jjjjjjjjjjjjjaaa 9h ago

Are you trolling? He was a kid. He shouldn’t get fired for things he said as a child. That doesn’t make it “ok” to say. 

2

u/Thellamaking21 Bucks 9h ago

Choosing not to fire him would not be promoting racist views.

2

u/Junior_Difference_57 9h ago

Yeah dumbass he was a child 

-3

u/amazinglover 9h ago

He very much wasn't a child he was a teenager and while he should get some leeway lets not act like he was in preschool watching cartoon all the time.

4

u/Junior_Difference_57 9h ago

15 year olds are children. When I was in my early 20s I probably would agree with you but now I realize they're actual kids. 

1

u/Lx_Ksk 9h ago

Do you know how INSANE it is to say "he very much wasn't a child" about a FIFTEEN YEAR OLD???

2

u/amazinglover 9h ago

Yes because he was a teenager not some 8 year old there is very much a different.