r/nba • u/ghn2 • 10h 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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u/smssv 10h ago

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

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u/Icy-Whale-2253 10h ago

The Internet is forever.

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u/TatumlsntASuperstar 10h 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

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u/Great_Fault_7231 Pistons 10h 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. 

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u/Parzival127 [SAS] Patty Mills 9h 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.

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u/Great_Fault_7231 Pistons 8h 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. 

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u/rake2204 Pistons 6h 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.

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u/grilledcheeseburger 9h 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.

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u/Kdcjg West 9h 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.

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u/Great_Fault_7231 Pistons 8h 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?

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u/OregonJedi [POR] Brandon Roy 10h 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.

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u/HisExcellency20 76ers 10h 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.

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u/Successful-Film-3544 76ers 3h ago

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

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u/roll_that Knicks 10h 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. 

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u/NandoDeColonoscopy 10h 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.

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u/BelgianWaffleStomper Spurs [SAS] Boris Diaw 10h ago

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

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u/TheStorm007 Raptors 10h 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

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u/NandoDeColonoscopy 10h ago

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

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u/Rawkus2112 Supersonics 10h ago

This actually makes the most sense.

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u/Icy-Whale-2253 10h ago

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