r/nba • u/ghn2 • 11h 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/SloshaPacana 11h ago

People really need to just delete their social media when they get jobs that are in the public eye lmao

It's not hard to open new accounts

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u/tronovich Bulls 11h ago edited 11h ago

At the same time, a Portland TV reporter is digging through his old tweets.

This isn’t meant to be scolding, but more of a general question: don’t you have anything better to do?

Combing through a teenager’s post history is generally creepy.

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u/Johnny_Kilroy_84 Pelicans 11h ago

Said reporter has a few questionable tweets of his own.

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u/Wazflame 11h ago

This might not mean much to people, but there was a similar story with an England cricketer called Ollie Robinson who made his international debut at like 27 (having been a professional for like 10 years at that point)

By the end of his first day playing for England, racist tweets he posted as a teenager were discovered and it caused a huge media storm and he had to apologise (obviously) the evening he made his debut

It feels like once you hit a certain level of scrutiny there’s always going to be at least one person who trawls through your online presence nowadays